Staff at a Birmingham-based asylum support charity are set to strike on 21 December after the organisation announced its plans to close.
Asylum Support and Immigration Resource Team (ASIRT) told Civil Society News it is closing in March 2023 and is currently focused on trying to find new hosts for the projects that it delivers.
The charity, which offers free legal advice to people subject to immigration control in Birmingham and the West Midlands, aid other agencies have committed to have clients referred to them from Monday.
Meanwhile, the United Voices of the World (UVW) union has announced that its members at the charity will be taking strike action.
Workers are calling for ASIRT to stop the planned closure and instead keep providing services.
The union added that the planned strikes were also in response to issues with the management of the charity and a refusal to recognise their trade union of choice.
Matt Collins, organiser for UVW, said: “Our members see no credible reason to dissolve this much needed service, UVW calls on the labour movement to back our members to save a crucial legacy of the anti-racist struggles of the people of Birmingham and assert the right of charity workers to organise”.
UVW is calling on the ASIRT trustees to listen to the workers' demands, and to take immediate action to address their concerns.
‘The trustees have consistently refused transparency’
Eve Phillips, immigration caseworker for ASIRT and UVW member, said: “Undocumented people across the West Midlands, who use and need this legal support service, have been entirely disregarded by trustees.
“The trustees have consistently refused transparency or to meaningfully consult with workers in any ways that could prevent the charity’s closure, for example by hearing our ideas about how the responsibilities of the director, a role to which they’ve failed to recruit, could be met in other ways, utilising the experience and expertise of the workers.
“We are striking in solidarity with the people we work with and advocate on behalf of every day.”
A previous statement from the charity said despite numerous efforts by the board to attract high calibre candidates to the role of chief executive, “we have failed to appoint”.
“Long periods without a senior manager in place has led to a reduction in fundraising activity, an attrition of funds and a precarious financial outlook,” the statement added.
According to its latest accounts, the charity has an annual income of £303,000 and employs around six staff.
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