Diligenta employees are engaged in outsourcing activities that include call centers, back-office operations, and claims management for several major clients, including Lloyds, M&G, Aviva, and Phoenix. “Diligenta generated an average of £82,000 per employee in 2023, with a profit of £27.1 million. In 2024, this rose to £28.9 million, while revenue reached an all-time high of £606 million. In 2024, a dividend of £14 million was paid to shareholders. This dividend could have funded a 5% pay raise for all staff.” Diligenta workers therefore have good reason to stand their ground and secure a decent deal!

In January, the Unite union called a strike at the company’s offices in Liverpool, Glasgow, Reading, Edinburgh, and Stirling, escalating previous actions. The dispute actually dates back to March of last year, when, after two months, Diligenta withdrew from negotiations. It had offered a 3% raise for those earning up to £40,000, 2% up to £70,000, and nothing above those amounts. In June, workers, called to a “consultative vote,” overwhelmingly rejected the offer.

A 24-hour strike was then called for November 28, followed by a couple of two-day strikes (one of which spanned two weekend days) that concluded on December 9. But the company refused to make a better offer, one that would at least mitigate the effects of inflation.

Two one-week strikes were then called, one from January 12 to 18 of this year and the second from January 26 to 30. Employees at the Peterborough headquarters were also asked to vote on the strike.

In Reading, Diligenta workers had been outsourced to work for M&G, a company primarily focused on pensions, formerly part of the Prudential insurance group. Although they were previously M&G employees, they are now, while working in M&G offices, employed by Diligenta—doing the same work, perhaps even sitting at the same desks, but for lower pay!

In Reading, a picket line at the edge of a large roundabout was cheered on by the blaring horns of cars and trucks. The picket’s location was problematic since M&G’s offices are on the top floor of a large building housing the offices of many other companies: but of course, undecided workers were recognized at the entrance and encouraged to support the strike.

Other Diligenta workers who work from home greatly appreciated participating in the picket line, which reduced their sense of isolation through the solidarity of their striking colleagues. It is beneficial for strikers to gather at a picket line, in that physical space that divides the proletariat from the bourgeoisie, where the contrast between opposing class interests is evident and palpable.

At the picket line, the only explicit political presence was that of vendors of The Socialist, “descendants” of the old “militant tendency” that sought to infiltrate and transform the Labour Party into an “authentic” socialist party.

There was also a supporter of the Corbynite party “Your Party,” which somehow thinks it can resurrect “the parliamentary path to socialism,” and one from the Green Party, which is trying to cultivate a “left-wing” image. The Labour Party obviously continues to stand as the insurmountable barrier to any possible economic action by workers in the UK, just like the Democratic Party, with its particular left-wing satellites, in the United States. And yet, as in the United States, the old and established “lesser evil” of the Democratic Party and the Labour Party is seen as “the only realistic opposition” to the openly right-wing parties led by Trump and Farage, thereby defending capitalism. Although the Unite union is still affiliated with the Labour Party, its “political base,” it can—and on some occasions has—drastically reduced its financial contribution. Individual members also have the option of choosing whether or not to allocate the portion of their union dues intended to fund the Labour Party’s political activities, such as the election of its candidates, etc. It is clear, however, that Unite continues to refuse to even consider the possibility of severing its “historic” ties with the Labour Party, despite the frequent and ongoing examples of equally “historic” betrayal by the Labour Party against the working class—too numerous now to mention.