Stella Morgan is a Nigerian cleaning supervisor at UAL who was sacked by the outsourcing company Bouygues for feeling ill and taking a rest during her break. Stella suffers from diabetes.

Stella has worked hard at UAL for 12 years with no history of performance issues, including during the Covid-19 pandemic, for which she and her colleagues went above and beyond – often travelling and working during the most dangerous periods of the pandemic – to keep our buildings safe.

As well as further exposing the inequality of outsourcing, where staff can be dismissed for minor infractions with no warning, this extreme decision also comes at a time of heightened trade union activity at UAL.

UAL cleaners, including Stella, successfully balloted for strike action for equal terms and conditions with directly employed staff earlier this year, and Stella is an active member within the campaign.

The extreme nature of the decision therefore appears to be part of a broader strategy to intimidate union members ahead of industrial action. Trade union victimisation is of course illegal, and should be of grave concern to UAL if it is occurring within their walls.

Sacking cleaning staff during a pandemic, after such staff have already given so much to keep staff and students safe, is a travesty.

If this is how cleaning staff, the majority of whom are, like Stella, from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, are treated then UAL has no business calling itself an anti-racist university.

We, the undersigned, call on the immediate reinstatement of Stella Morgan and a full apology from UAL.