Covid-19

The cross-union campaign “NHS Workers Say No!” is organising a day of demonstrations on 12 September. (London: 11 a.m. from the BBC, Portland Place. Details for other cities here ). Article and video. This follows a round of protests in many cities on 8 August, when NHS workers across the country came onto the streets to demand a pay rise, an earlier London street protest on 29 July, and workplace actions across the country. The demand is that all NHS workers (including those contracted out) get a 15% pay rise. That does not fully make up for the loss in pay NHS workers have had over the last decade due to pay freezes. When taking inflation into account, NHS workers have lost 20% in real terms.

The scrapping of Public Health England (PHE) and a new government health task force point to the Tories using the background of the pandemic to make radical changes to the NHS. The abolition of PHE is seen as an early attempt to cast blame for the devastating Covid-19 response away from Boris Johnson. It may also be the first step to bringing the NHS into increased central and political control. Last time the Tories led an NHS reorganisation was the Health and Social Care Act (HSCA) of 2012. This made fundamental changes, removing central responsibility for healthcare from the Secretary of...

The New Zealand government pays for workers self-isolating because of the pandemic to get $586 (£291) a week. Even the Australian government has conceded some paid “pandemic leave”, for care-home workers and those in the state of Victoria. Now the Tories have followed with a sort of quarter or one-eighth concession: £13 a day for some low-paid workers in a few trial areas if they have positive virus tests or are contacts. Stephen Reicher, a member of the government’s official SAGE committee, commented: “Woefully inadequate… Why only £13 a day? Why only in high infection areas? Why only for...

Over two hundred Covid-conspiracy theorists, including some genuinely wearing tin foil hats, held a rally and march in Bristol; thousands in London; and tens of thousands in Berlin, on the weekend of 29-30 August. Participants and speakers opposed masks, vaccines, lockdown, 5G, and the “New World Order”. They pushed wild, incoherent, and often contradictory conspiracy theories, from 9/11 classics or a global shadowy elite of (satanic) paedophiles (QAnon), to Covid-19 being a hoax or 5G being an infrastructure designed to control individuals through microchips implanted under the guise of...

The National Education Union (NEU) favours the reopening of English and Welsh schools in September, without qualification. That is positive. But the union is not advocating action to stop unsafe or careless practice by school managements. It is not even publicising to members Section 44 of the 1996 Employment Rights Act, which allows workers to quit work areas where they see a “serious or imminent danger”. The NEU leaders proceed as if they are writing a comment piece in the Guardian , or a blog, rather than running a campaigning union. There are plenty of issues we need action to fix...

For this entry, I’m going to quote the letter I received this week — I hope you find it as entertaining as I did. A caveat: compared to millions of people my working conditions and pay during the pandemic have been extremely good. I consider myself very lucky not be self-employed, unemployed, shielding, or forced to work while sick, among many other abuses and insults that have been inflicted on our class. This corporate letter is absurd, but it is at least a pretence at courtesy and recognition. *** Dear… In recent months the teamwork and commitment you have shown towards Veolia’s mission of...

Strikes to resist job cuts by our members at Tate galleries are continuing. I attended picket lines on 28 and 29 August. Tate bosses have now identified the workers whose jobs they intend to cut, cruelly doing so by sending out emails late at night on Friday 28th. Meanwhile, Tate is advertising for new jobs and is still recruiting staff! We’re therefore demanding that the workers facing redundancy be reallocated to the positions for which Tate is now recruiting. We’ll begin a ballot of our members at London’s Southbank Centre, also over job cuts, on 1 September. Bosses there have extended the...

Further exchanges on party-building, cooperation, and debate - Neil Faulkner Further exchanges on "workers' action to impose lockdowns" - Stuart Jordan and Martin Thomas

In April the government implemented a ban on landlords evicting tenants. Though eviction orders continued to be lodged, none have been acted upon by the courts. This scheme was due to end on Sunday 23 August, and now has been extended only to 20 September. The Scottish government has extended the ban to March 2021. The housing charity Shelter estimates that 227,000 people are in rent arrears, which amounts to 2% of private tenants. Ben Beadle, the chief executive of the National Residential Landlords' Association is quoted in the Financial Times saying that: “The overwhelming majority of...

Drax power station workers are balloting, 14-25 August, for industrial action against 230 threatened redundancies there. The GMB union has won a 95% majority, on a 67.5% turnout, for strikes at British Gas if the bosses do not back down on a threat to fire their whole workforce and rehire on new terms. The Unite union held a mass meeting of 1,000 British Airways ramp, baggage, and cargo workers near Heathrow on 20 August, and they voted for the union to move for “industrial and legal action” over job cuts, pay cuts, and BA cheating on redundancy pay for workers who have already signed for...