Deaths at Work

By New Worker correspondent

Last week saw the release of figures from the Office of National Statistics relating to Covid-19 fatalities. These, said transport union RMT showed that male bus and coach drivers and taxi drivers are two of the occupational groups with the highest rates of Covid-19 deaths.
     Mick Cash, the union’s departing General Secretary said: “Bus workers and taxi drivers have kept vital connections running throughout the pandemic for other key workers and essential travellers, and we need an industry-wide approach which ensures their safety and takes action to address the threats from the new Covid variant.
     “RMT is reiterating its calls for the Government to ensure that transport workers, are classified as a priority group for Covid-19 vaccination. This will save lives and maintain the resilience of the UK’s transport networks.”
     With regard to the situation on the rails the union also warns that “a complacent and callous approach to the increased threat from Covid-19 is leading to a surge in deaths and illness of transport workers”.
     Members report that since November the number of deaths and illnesses due to coronavirus amongst rail workers have at least doubled. At the same time Department for Transport figures also show that rail use is three times higher when compared to the last national lockdown.
    The union blames a “creeping complacency and a callous refusal by transport bosses to mandate a nationwide overhaul of risk assessments to take into account the heightened risk of the new virus has caused the surge”.
     Mick Cash deplored the Government’s laxity in dealing with “a lethal cocktail threatening rail workers … But instead of responding to our call for a urgent national review of all risk assessments we are being told its business as usual – this is as callous as it is complacent.
    “We are advising our members of their right to stop working if their safety is threatened and I will be seeking an urgent meeting with Grant Shapps asking that he intervenes to take speedy action to address the new threat and also to prioritise transport workers for the vaccine”.
     At one bus depot, that of Bannockburn First Bus, operations are still ongoing and bosses are only reducing services despite having 28 positive cases of Covid-19 which represents over half the workforce at the depot.
     Graeme Turnbull, a Unite industrial officer, demanding the temporary closure of the depot saying: “This is a timely reminder of the considerable risk and sacrifice that our members and all transport workers undertake on a daily basis to ensure key workers and our communities function in these challenging times. It is also vitally important that the company conducts an immediate investigation to understand how the virus has been able to take hold and spread across the workforce.”

On the Buses

by New Worker correspondent

In London, sick pay from day one for the capital’s 20,000 bus men and women has been secured by their union, Unite.

This victory only came after intense pressure on bus operators, Transport for London (TfL), the London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the national government for better protection from COVID-19 for bus workers.

Over 21 London transport workers have died as a result of the virus, 15 of them bus workers. Some bus workers may have felt that they had to come to work when exhibiting signs of having caught the disease because of the lack of company sick pay.

Unite says that securing company sick pay from day one, regardless of length of service, means that bus workers fearful of having contracted the illness can now stay home safe in the knowledge that they will not be plunged into immediate hardship.

A regional officer for the union, John Murphy, said: “If they fall victim to this virus, bus workers need to be able to go sick from day one, to isolate themselves and to recuperate. They should not face a terrible choice between health and hardship. Keeping people at home when they are unwell has to be part of the effort to combat this virus. With this victory we can now concentrate our efforts to make people safer at work.”

He also said that the union is pressing “the best in PPE [personal protective equipment], masks and gloves to be available for bus workers and for the ending of rear door entry trials and for sealed front doors rolled out immediately across the capital’s buses”.

Across the country First South West Bus, which serves Bristol, Bath and Somerset, has come under attack from transport union RMT for what it calls the “most inept steps they have ever seen from an employer to protect their workers from COVID-19”.

After making strenuous representation to First South West Buses to fit suitable Perspex screens to their fleet of buses in order to provide a physical barrier between the driver and their passengers, all the company did was to screw what looked like a shower curtain to the ceiling of the drivers cab that hung well short of the bus wind-screen. It was so flimsy passengers could been pull it to one side in order to speak to the driver.

General Secretary Mick Cash said that: “Sainsbury’s are clearly far more concerned with the safety of their staff than you appear to be. Sainsbury's have within 24 hours sourced and fitted to multiple check outs high quality Perspex screens that give a good level of protection and they were fitted to check outs at a maximum time of 20 minutes per unit.”

The matter has been taken up with Public Health England (PHE), who are conducting a review of transport safety in relation to COVID-19.

He also noted that: “RMT also has other concerns about the bus industry including issues for engineering staff in depots and the facilities provided for employees in mess rooms. Many bus drivers on rural routes have no access to facilities to wash their hands – a key risk control measure as advised by Public Health England.”

Cleaners Fight Back

By New Worker correspondent

Transport union RMT is stepping up its campaign to secure justice for cleaners working on London Underground (LU). The cleaners are employed by private contractors ABM, the New York-based facilities manager that has a turnover of $6.4 billion from its 140,000 employees. The cleaners have been fighting for parity with directly employed LU workers on a number of fronts including pensions, sick pay and travel. RMT argues that ABM cleaners are being discriminated against when compared with their colleagues. In particular it deplores the inaction of the Labour Mayor of London on the issue.

Speaking at the launch of a strike ballot that opened on Monday, RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said: “It is a disgrace that over two thousand staff who clean London Underground’s trains and stations are treated as second-class citizens in their own workplace. We intend to right that wrong. This large group of staff, employed by the contractors ABM, clean up the human waste, vomit and other detritus and are instrumental in keeping London moving. They do some of the dirtiest jobs round the clock right across the tube network, and without their rapid response and continuing efforts services would be seriously compromised. They should not be subject to this outrageous workplace discrimination. It’s about time Sadiq Khan and LU called their contractors to account. We are calling on Londoners to back their tube cleaners’ fight for justice and as the ballot gets underway we remain available for serious and genuine talks.”

When the five year contract was awarded in 2017 Transport for London piously said it would ensure that cleaners would receive the London Living Wage and would end sub-contracting. An ABM advertisement for one of these jobs seen on the same day as the ballot opened offered precisely that. A full-time night-shift 10pm–5:30am was at the London Living Wage of £10.55 per hour but made no mention of being pensionable.

Also in London, an almost identical strike is underway at St Mary’s Hospital, part of the Imperial College NHS Trust in Paddington, where Alexander Fleming discovered the properties of penicillin; this time organised by the non-TUC union United Voices of the World (UVW). Two hundred cleaners, porters and caterers held the first of a series of strikes on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. The outsourced workers are demanding better pay and working conditions from Sodexo, a French multinational that has many such contracts in Britain.

 The workers are paid an hourly rate of £8.21 and even less for those under 25-years-old. This is up to £10,000 less per year than staff of equivalent grade under the NHS Agenda for Change, so the even London Living Wage is a distant dream. Obviously the bosses cannot afford to pay it because profits slumped nine per cent to $745.8 million last year. Sodexo claims it has already agreed to pay the London living wage from April and remained open to “negotiation and arbitration”.

Because workers only have the bare minimum Statutory Sick Pay they have to work on wards when ill, sometimes with flu, because they cannot afford to take time off when sick. They are campaigning for better changing facilities as well as for an end to discrimination that bans outsourced staff using NHS canteens and staff-rooms. As an additional insult, workers are forced to change in mice-ridden, dimly lit and mixed-gender changing rooms located in the hospital’s basement. One striking cleaner said: “I work 55 hours a week just to cover my rent. St Mary’s is my home, I spend more time here than in my house. Yet I am treated like a dog and made to feel like dirt.”

Petros Elia, an organiser for the UVW street union, says: “Sodexo’s contract with Imperial allowed its former CEO, Michel Landel, to enjoy obscene executive pay totalling nearly a million pounds a year and annual bonuses of up to 200 per cent of his salary. Sodexo and St Mary’s can afford to pay our workers in line with NHS rates and we urge them to do so, otherwise the strikes will continue indefinitely.”

At the same time, UVW are fighting similar battles across London. At Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens and St James’s Park, the Royal Parks in central London, park attendants are going on strike at Halloween. Cleaners at the Channel 4 offices on Gray’s Inn Road will be also on strike.

In 2016, the now 3,000-strong union organised the largest cleaners strike in UK history and became the first trade union to force a UK university [the London School of Economics (LSE)] to bring the entirety of its outsourced cleaners in-house. It also organised one of the longest strikes in the history of the City of London, lasting 61 consecutive days. UVW also represents workers in the legal sector, charity sector, cultural sector, architectural sector and even sex workers. Let us hope the results in 2019 are the same as in 2016.