Solidarity 544, 21 April 2020

Diary of a Tube worker: Absolutely essential?

While I waited for my train into work I heard three separate automated announcements. One from a member of staff, one from an NHS paramedic and one from the child of an NHS worker. They had one message in common “Do not travel unless you are a critical worker making an absolutely essential journey”. That first part is right, but that second part? Well, why are TfL playing me a message about not travelling unless absolutely essential when they want me to come in right now at 23:00 on a Friday? This week I was unlucky. I didn’t get my act together, emails went unanswered and my phone calls didn...

After Trinity Bridge House

We’re in negotiations with the civil service to secure a national agreement on what should happen if there’s a confirmed case of Covid-19 in a workplace. Obviously that individual worker needs to immediately go home, with full pay, and our demand is that their immediate team is also sent home on full pay. We’re further demanding that their immediate work space, if it can be isolated, be shut down and deep cleaned, and if it can’t, that the entire building be closed. The national negotiations were impelled by struggles our members faced at workplace level, for example at Trinity Bridge House, a...

Wake up Labour

Parliament is set to reopen virtually on 21 April, as Labour leader Keir Starmer among others has demanded. That’s a good: it will subject the Tories to more, badly needed, scrutiny. But if Parliament can meet, why can’t the Labour Party start having meetings again too? In general Labour’s response to the crisis has been to shut down as a party, including by stopping pretty much all meetings and activity. Beyond some muted encouragement for local mutual aid groups at the start, the Labour Party as such – as opposed to many Labour activists – has played little role in struggles during the...

When workers have refused to work on safety grounds

We have reported on many other examples, but here are some sent to us by a transport worker and RMT activist. UK transport workers BA cabin crew, Covid-19, 2020 Crossrail, 2019 Tube train safety checks, 2015 Tube drivers, 2011 Govia Thameslink, 2016 Tube drivers, Northern line brakes, 2005 Various examples, 2007 International USA, Covid-19 France, Covid-19 Canada, Covid-19 Australia, unsafe trains See also section44.co.uk

The left must rebuild

Maria Exall, an activist in the Communication Workers’ Union’s Greater London Combined telecoms branch and Vice-Chair of Labour Unions (the Labour Party-union link organisation), spoke to Sacha Ismail. How should the labour movement be responding to the Covid-19 crisis? The immediate issues for the labour movement are the same as the issues for the wider working class and the whole country – the lack of PPE for people to do their jobs, problems with safety at work and elsewhere, the threat to the NHS, and so on. These are issues for workers, for their families and friends and wider society...

Crisis in social care: fight for public ownership

In the week up to 10 April, according to the Office of National Statistics, 1,043 care home residents died as a result of Covid-19 – leaping from 217 the week before. Then over the Easter weekend (11-15 April), according to the Care Quality Commission, that may have doubled again to about 2,000. Before those figures, Care England, which represents care homes across the country, estimated that around 7,500 residents had died from the virus - five times the government's 1,400 figure and adding to the total (official) number of deaths by almost half. National Records of Scotland has suggested...

Councils and the pandemic

In Lambeth, our union, Unison, has been able to press the council on its response to the pandemic, and with results. Early on, we won full isolation pay for all workers in the council, including agency workers and zero-hours workers. The council has moved on other issues. Councils are demanding a "cast-iron public commitment that [the government] will provide additional funding to fully meet extra costs to councils and compensate for lost income" in the pandemic. Immediately, the government has paid out £1.6 billion to councils, allowed councils to postpone business rates payments to central...

Can we get R<1?

Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Spain, and France have all announced measures to ease their pandemic lockdowns. Several other countries in Europe look as if they are at or past a pandemic peak. The UK may be around a peak. As of yet, no-one - not the scientists, not the governments, and not us either - has even a halfway clear picture of how these easings (over-hopefully called "exit strategies") can best be designed to avoid new peaks. Only slow, piecemeal, feeling-our-way approaches are possible. The UK looks not yet ready even for that. The wild "exit now" talk of...

Furlough can you go?

TfL and LU bosses have announced, via a bulletin from TfL Commissioner Mike Brown, that they intend to explore the use of the government's "Job Retention Scheme" to place some of us on "furlough", essentially a paid leave of absence. The government scheme subsidises 80% of employees' wages, with...

Mitie steals cleaners' wages

Notoriously exploitative outsourcing contractor Mitie has robbed cleaners on Merseyrail of wages.

Bosses have announced they're withdrawing from a recent agreement, due to be backdated to July 2019, to increase wages to £9/hour. This will leave cleaners £500 out of pocket and around £1,000 worse...

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