Shutting the Sites

By New Worker correspondent

Last Friday saw campaigners demand that Labour-run Hackney Council cease work at construction sites in the north London borough. Organised by ShutTheSites, protesters picketed the Parkhaus development on Downs Road to demand developers close the site for the safety of workers and the wider community.

Local Labour Party member George Binette also said that such as cannot be considered essential work because they lack any social housing provision, which is what you would expect when one-bed flats start at £550,000 and features will include a rooftop pool.

Binette said: “It seems to me that profit has been put before people, with original guidelines on social distancing diluted with working practices on the sites.

“It is inherently impossible to have proper social distancing. You can’t say it’s two metres for the rest of the population, and less than that for construction workers.”

ShutTheSites protesters are also calling on the council to pause work at another local redevelopment, which includes social housing. The protestors say that all sites should be paused “unless the project was very near completion and it was a situation where people were going to be moving in in weeks or months”.

The group is also calling for the government furlough scheme to be unlocked for construction workers because this would pressure large construction companies into paying up as the crisis continue.

At present, brickies, sparks and scaffies face loss of all pay if not working despite the attendant difficulties faced in maintaining social distance and using the correct PPE [personal protective equipment] on-site, because most construction sites are not covered by the furlough scheme and many workers are paid on piecework rates rather than hourly.

Hackney Council said it follows government guidance by keeping work going whilst putting measures in place to protect workers and locals, and it has been understood to be working site-by-site putting protection measures in place. Berkeley Homes suspended work on the Woodberry Down Estate but has reopened, albeit with fewer staff.