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Please check out the website and Facebook for info on how PIE are dealing with the coronavirus crisis. Face to face appointments have restarted but with strict social distancing and hygiene measures in place. Appointments only. [31 July 2020]

Precariat Office Scotland / Oficina Precaria / PIE – the places unions don’t reach.

 
Who are we / What we do

Oficina Precaria / PIE / Precariat Office Scotland is a project/organisation that deals with attention, support and advice (free legal support) to any migrant residing in Scotland. We attend in various languages to facilitate access to information that is easily understandable about the rights of migrants.

We offer free solidarity and support for people in a precarious employment situation as a casual worker and as a migrant. We offer legal advice that takes care of answering questions and offers information on workers’ rights and bureaucratic paperwork, completely free of charge. The aim is to help the worker legalise their situation or at least understand exactly what situation they are in. We take cases to tribunals (either Employment or First Tier or Small Claims)

  • We help with immigration laws and deal with migration issues.
  • We help migrants with tenant rights and landlord problems.

We have 4 areas of main support: Legal, Welfare, Health Support and Mental wellbeing and alternatives to precarious forms of employment (e.g. help forming coops)

The DUNG Award

We also lead campaigns that report precarious practices and give our renowned DUNG Award to those employers that exploit migrants the most in Scotland.

We intend to put pressure on organisations that show no respect for workers’ rights and thus achieve specific improvements for migrant workers. But we also aim to show the instability of migrant employment conditions due to the fact we are considered cheap labour.

Migrants’ precarious working conditions mean precarious life conditions as precarity transfers to everyday life. This has a negative impact on self esteem and self worth as a human being. Not being able to communicate due to language barriers, understand your rights or know where to go (as most migrants lack the cultural, societal and family support that they have in their own countries) has a huge impact on the self and makes people accept their own exploitation and dehumanising treatment.

For these reasons we promote and teach empowerment and useful tools in our workshops; from a wide variety of knowledge transfer issues and sharing experiences to give you resources for self defence in several life scenarios.

We also help access existing organisations, unions and resources already established in Scotland as well as working closely with other social activist groups in improving labour/life conditions for all workers!

See the free Food & Resources Bank and Free soup Thursdays. Also the ‘Emergency 1-Stop Shop’ funded by Leith Chooses has now opened. The project is aimed at alleviating the economic effects of covid-19 and its restrictions by helping people in need. Among other services, we offer free women’s self-defence classes and English classes for people with limited knowledge of the language that will help to break barriers and improve opportunities.

Contact

Queries and consultations will be done primarily by email. Ask for an appointment. Appointments are on Fridays at ACE.

PIE always need people to help, especially with translations, knowledge in social support, work related support, etc. in Scotland. If you are interested, contact PIE here or check out the Facebook page.

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