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| Thousands dying from lack of safety action or income support |
Several new Reports confirm what we have contended for the
past year: governments and employers are killing workers as they put big
business profits ahead of workers’ health amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
The TUC reports over 10,000 workers have died of the virus, arising
from workplace infections, and countless more are suffering the long-term health
problems of long-Covid.
Yet, the very same week, Public Health England identified 3,549
outbreaks of COVID-19 in workplaces since last July, with another 100 last week
alone, despite the whole of the UK being in lockdown. Over 500 workers tested positive
in the big Swansea DVLA centre recently, and unions in Scotland have just written
to the Scottish government demanding urgent action to curb the spread of COVID-19
clusters in call centres.
Those figures will be a gross underestimate, as they only cover
outbreaks in offices, factories, construction sites, etc. actually reported to
the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
Not One Single Employer Sanctioned!
What are the HSE - and the government which funds and
directs their operations - doing in response?
Not one single employer has been prosecuted for presiding over
the supreme hazardous workplace conditions; failure to tackle the spread of COVID-19,
with its lethal consequences.
Not one single workplace has even been issued a HSE Prohibition
Notice, whereby inspectors have the power to stop workplace operations, where they
judge continued industrial or commercial activity is “deemed to be injurious or
damaging to health.”
Not one employer has even been fined for negligence, whereas
individuals who breach lockdown regulations face penalties of up to £1,000.
One of the prime causes of employers escaping any significant
sanctions from the HSE is that the latter decided to classify COVID-19 as only
a “significant” threat, rather than place it in its highest risk category, of
being “serious”.
In making this breath-taking decision, the HSE has been
fully backed by governments.
Tory Minister Thinks COVID Deaths 'Non-Permanent'?!
In an astonishing declaration - even by the standards of the
Tory government - Employment Minister Mims Davies tried to justify this inaction
by the HSE when she told Parliament: “the effects of Covid are non-permanent or
reversible, non-progressive, and any disability is temporary for the working
population as a whole.”
Those of us who have suffered the loss of friends or family members can angrily testify to this heartless Tory hack that death from COVID-19 is both permanent and irreversible.
HSE Pressured to Keep Workplaces Open
One experienced HSE inspector, who withheld his name for
fear of retribution, told the press: “HSE internal instructions have said they
would be very reluctant to support an inspector who did serve a prohibition
notice.”
He went on to confirm government pressure is being brought
to bear on them to keep workplaces open, failing to take account of risks to
workers and their families.
“HSE are telling us ‘walk off site if you feel unsafe’, but
you can’t do anything to stop work. We can leave crowded workplaces lacking
social distancing if we feel ourselves threatened, but we can’t stop people from
working.”
That simply confirms what we wrote last April about a
complete lack of safety inspections on many construction sites, exacerbated by the
advice to HSE inspectors to stay clear of risks to themselves, while meantime
building workers put themselves on the line - including for non-essential work,
such as building luxury apartments.
The underlying reason for this hooligan inaction by HSE bosses,
in tandem with the government - taking no meaningful actions against workplaces
being super-spreaders of the Coronavirus - is cuts.
The Tories tried to make much of investing £14million in HSE
last June, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared with previous cuts of £100million.
No wonder HSE can’t cope with the deluge of over 100,000 Covid-related
complaints from workers and the public in the past year – 25,000 of them last
month alone.
It Takes Collective Workers' Action
It took strike action, and the threat of walking off the job,
to force governments – in the UK, Scotland and internationally – to extend the
closures of many non-essential building sites and non-food retail, or for
employers to provide even the bare necessities of hand cleansers, social distancing
and other safety measures in workplaces across all sectors that remained open.
And amongst the unsung frontline heroes of this year of the
plague are the thousands of shop stewards and union Health and Safety
representatives who have confronted employers with demands for concrete safety
measures, risk assessments and cessation of unsafe work. Often facing obstruction,
hostility, even victimisation, as they seek to defend workers’ lives.
For Workers' Control
This volunteer army of workers’ representatives should be at
the heart of improving workplace safety - with the full collaboration of an
expanded HSE inspectorate. Not just during the pandemic, but for the ongoing
future.
Workers’ control of health and safety - based on the day-to-day knowledge of these people rooted in the shop floor - is not only democratic, but a far safer mechanism than reliance on remote, well-paid senior managers, wielding pressure on behalf of the owners to maximize profit, even where that means cutting corners and risking lives.
Lost Wages Prevent Self-Isolation
Meantime, medical professionals have published new Reports
underlining the fatal risks workers are being subjected to, especially amongst
the lowest paid, due to the utter failure of governments to provide proper
support to those who should be self-isolating.
Dr Muge Cevik is an expert in infectious diseases and
medical virology at the University of St Andrews.
She and a group of other experts have just published a
damning report in the British Medical Journal which demonstrates that less than
20% of people are able to adhere to isolation regulations - even though the
overwhelming majority are willing and wanting to do so.
The report carries data showing the vast majority of people
are willing to self-isolate when tested positive, but the actual ability to do
so is 3 times lower amongst those on less than £20,000 a year, or with less
than £100 in savings.
The article’s other underlying conclusion is hardly a new
revelation to those of us who have fought throughout the past year for full,
100% average wages for every sick or self-isolating worker, to prevent them
being dragged into work by the threat of financial ruin. Lost wages are the
primary reason for not following full isolation guidelines.
Low Pay and Crowded Housing
In other statements, Dr Cevik has highlighted the majority
of hospitalizations are from infections amongst key workers.
She told CNN: “There are huge outbreaks in warehouses, meatpacking
plants, care homes... and the only thing that combines these sectors are low-paid
workers likely to live in crowded houses.”
Back in April 2020, I wrote that the government should
provide not just full average wages but the option of safe, staffed and caring self-isolation
facilities (quarantine) as part of the NHS, for example by usage of unoccupied hotel
rooms.
In the recent BMJ article the medical professionals argue
that governments “need to focus support on those in high exposure occupations,
living in overcrowded housing... and should include free and safe accommodation,
alongside adequate income support, job protection and help with caring
responsibilities.”
They cite examples of Test-and-Care schemes in San Francisco
and New York where people testing positive are offered either free hotel
accommodation or free delivery of food, medicine and transport (and even dog
walking services) to help them quarantine at home.
Predictably, those measures have not only boosted adherence
to self-isolation but greatly increased the uptake of testing itself, as
workers on a pitiful income are more likely to avoid getting tests, even though
they have symptoms, because they are terrified at the prospect of being forced
to take time off work on barely any income.
Terrified to Take Time Off Sick
Examples of the latter are rampant. That was one of the factors
in the cruel carnage in Scotland's privatised care homes last year, where workers
on or just above the miserly minimum wage, with no worthwhile occupational sick
benefit schemes, dragged themselves into work to avoid going under financially.
A union organiser for taxi drivers explained: “I know a
driver who had to self-isolate four times in 2 months. How does that work? These
are people currently only earning £35 to £50-a-day and are in most cases being
charged to install protective screens in the cab. When you’re in a desperate
situation you take risks.”
Or as a cleaner described, she has been forced to come in to
work in an empty office, where the staff are all working from home, to clean it
4 days a week. Last month she caught COVID-19, probably on a bus.
She stayed at home a few days but then went back to work:
“I couldn’t afford to stay at home because I was getting
hardly any income. I feel guilty that I went to work and might have infected
more people but I had no other option.”
When is £500 Worth Nothing? - When It's Refused!
The Tory Minister in charge of Test and Trace, Dido Harding,
told Parliament that 20,000 people a day are failing to stay at home after
being instructed to. Of course, countless others have avoided taking tests, out
of fear of losing their income.
In a grotesque and cynical PR stunt, the government conceded payment of £500 to those forced to self-isolate... but with enough strings attached to strangle it as any kind of support for low-paid workers that could help them stay off work and help break the chains of infection. In real life, nearly half of all those who’ve applied have been refused this modest sum, including 86% of all applicants in Liverpool.
Stop a Premature Stampede Back
The governments of Westminster and Holyrood are in danger of
using the rays of hope felt by us all at the rollout of Vaccines to stampede people
back to non-essential work, risking yet another eruption of disease and death, as
was caused by the profit-driven lunacies of ‘Eat Out and Help Out’ last summer,
and the commercialised craze over the Christmas period.
Shop-floor workers’ representatives, including Health and Safety
reps, should be given the full backing of their national union leaderships to
resist premature reopening, and to insist on enforcement of proper health and
safety measures in those workplaces unavoidably functioning.
Full Average Wages - Workers' Health Before Bosses' Wealth
In tandem with that, socialists and trade unionists need to
step up to demand that employers and governments pay full,100% average wages
to every worker, whether on furlough, sick leave or in self-isolation.
Elimination of COVID-19 will require more than just
vaccinations. It also needs localised Test, Trace Isolate and Care systems, free
of charge.
And looking beyond immediate palliative measures, working-class
people need a leadership prepared to tackle overcrowded housing, low pay, the
sick joke of £95 Statutory Sick Pay – and the deeper root causes of
increasingly frequent pandemics, themselves the products of a globalised
capitalist system which trashes the planet and its people for profit.
