Stop the Slaughter! Stop the War!

by New Worker correspondent

London comrades joined tens of thousands of people who marched through the heart of the capital on Saturday 16 December for another weekend of protests, calling for an immediate end to Israel’s assault on Gaza and condemning the Sunak government for again failing to vote in favour of a ceasefire  at the United Nations.
Over a hundred thousand demonstrators took part in the London protest, the sixth since the war began, to send a clear message to the Establishment that the majority of the population want a ceasefire and that the movement in support of the Palestinians is growing in strength. 
Thousands upon thousands of people in London and throughout the country have shown their opposition to the indiscriminate attacks on civilians which have claimed the lives of at least 17,000 Palestinians, including more than 7,000 children. Thousands more are missing presumed dead under the rubble of their own homes.
This has been one of the largest, sustained political campaigns in British history. The determination to keep protesting for an end to the suffering in Gaza is remarkable and the pressure on British politicians who have sided with Israel will not go away. Ben Jamal from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: “We are witnessing unrelenting horror in Gaza. Palestinians have been bombed, displaced, deprived of food, water, fuel, electricity and health services for 62 days and counting. The amount of destruction has been compared to that of German cities in World War Two, except it’s happened in a far shorter time. The scale of this catastrophe is so great that in a rare move, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, urging the UN Security Council to act.
“A permanent ceasefire must be the starting point to address the underlying causes of the situation, including decades of Israeli military occupation and a system of oppression against the Palestinian people that is considered internationally to meet the legal definition of apartheid. The British government must end its complicity in Israel’s crimes, starting by joining the call for the killing of civilians to stop completely.
“We will continue to march, demonstrate, and organise to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire and justice for the Palestinian people”.

Hospital workers stand for Palestine

NHS workers held a moment of silence in memory of their colleagues killed during the brutal Israeli onslaught against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip at a solidarity picket outside St Thomas’ Hospital in central London on Tuesday. Hospital staff and Palestinian solidarity activists called for an urgent and permanent cease-fire to end the slaughter of defenceless civilians that has already claimed the lives of over 11,000 Palestinian Arabs during the Israeli invasion. 

Fight for the NHS!

Corbyn says Centene out!

by New Worker correspondent

Jeremy Corbyn joined a protest against GP practices being taken over by a US health insurance company last week. The former Labour leader, along with East London MP Apsana Begum, joined demonstrators outside the London headquarters in Westminster of Operose Health – a subsidiary of the giant Centene corporation –to protest against NHS privatisation.
    Corbyn told the crowd to “fight for the NHS until hell freezes over” at the protest called by Doctors in Unite (DiU), a campaign led by the biggest union in the country.
    Unite, with 100,000 members in the health service, has hit out at “a culture of Tory cronyism that is rapidly enveloping the NHS”, and called for an urgent independent inquiry into the ever-expanding lobbying scandal engulfing the NHS and its impact on the accelerating pace of health service privatisation.
    The call for an inquiry – with its recommendations cemented into law – follows on from the revelation that Tory health secretary Matt Hancock met former prime minister David Cameron and financier Lex Greensill for a private drink in 2019 to discuss a new payment scheme for the NHS.
    Doctors in Unite chair Jackie Applebee said: “Ministers and senior NHS executives have repeatedly mouthed the mantra that the NHS is not being privatised.
    “But now we have the case of a huge swathe of English general practice, including the data of nearly half a million patients, being handed over to US health insurance giant Centene – with a breath-taking lack of transparency and openness.
    “Tory politicians and their outriders in the media roll out the tired old trope that all general practices are private, but this is disingenuous and they know it.
    “There is a world of difference between a multinational corporation that operates to make a profit, often by cutting staff and services, so that it can pay dividends to shareholders, and local GPs who are very much part of the NHS ‘family’ and provide services from a budget fixed by the Treasury.
    “The public needs to wake-up to the fact the NHS that they so value and which has been the lynchpin of the successful vaccination programme is being steadily sold off to profit-hungry healthcare companies – in this case one whose headquarters is in America.
    “This is another prime example of the accelerating privatisation of the NHS by stealth and Unite is spot-on to call for an independent inquiry into the wider lobbying scandal engulfing the NHS which emanates from a desire by profiteers to get their hands on lucrative health service contracts.
    “Now is a time to draw a line in the sand to preserve and cherish the NHS as an organisation free at the point of delivery to all those in need. If we are not vigilant, these founding principles of the NHS in 1948 will become pale shadows of themselves.”

NO going back until it's safe!

Bob the Builder

by New Worker correspondent

In the construction industry there are at present many battles over safety issues, including many concerning the rights and wrongs of actually working at this time. At the site of a new gas power station near Scunthorpe workers successfully demanded to be sent home because they were being forced to use fingerprint machines to clock-in to the site, which would spread coronavirus. Further north, construction unions Unite and GMB are demanding that Balfour Beatty furlough workers at the TeesREP renewable energy site in Teesport and other sites.

Many employers are trying to get around the rules. The bosses of Balfour Beatty insist that redundancy consultations for more than 60 workers at the site will continue during the lockdown and that the staff are not eligible to receive 80 per cent of their wages under the government’s job retention scheme. They justify this by claiming that redundancy consultations were planned before COVID-19 shut down the country and that registering the workers would go against government eligibility guidance for the scheme.

This excuse was described as “paper thin” by Unite the union, who point to the fact that other major construction contractors, such as Bilfinger and Altrad, have furloughed workers whose redundancy consultations were scheduled to take place during the lockdown.

Unite’s national officer for construction, Ian Woodland, said: “Balfour Beatty must reverse its decision not to furlough workers at the TeesREP site, as well as those at the Crossrail site in London and elsewhere. At best Balfour Beatty’s actions are misdirected and heartless, at worst they point to a cynical financial calculation that the firm will not have to pay out advance wages for these workers while the government’s financial support comes through.”

GMB national officer Steve Kemp added: “Balfour Beatty needs to urgently re-think their decision – it flies in the face of any kind of fairness. Other construction companies have taken a totally different view on how to proceed in very similar circumstances.”

House builders Persimmon, Barratt and Taylor Wimpey have stopped work, but Redrow and Cairn Construction have not. Last week two Tory ministers were confused about the issue, with Health Secretary Matt Hancock saying any worker who could not do their job from home should go to work to “keep the country running”. But Michael Gove said that only construction workers doing jobs “critical to the economy” should go in, adding that builders should not be going into people’s homes. The next day Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said that work in people’s homes was allowed if it was done safely.

As for the two main trade bodies, the National Federation of Builders, which represents small-to-medium sized contractors, said builders could work on sites if they followed safety guidelines; but the Federation of Master Builders said only emergency work should be carried out.

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith agreed that builders should only attend to emergency requirements. Andy Burnham, Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, deplored the fact that the decision to allow non-essential work appeared to have been made for “economic reasons”, saying: “When you're in the middle of a global pandemic, health reasons alone really should be guiding all decision-making.”

Construction workers are “angry and unprotected” at having to go work and others report being under pressure from employers to go in.

Many are officially self-employed and fear loss of income if their employers shut down.

The industry is notorious for sub-contracting and fake self-employment. Thus, Taylor Wimpey said it was looking at how to support around 2,000 directly employed staff but washed its hands of its “self-employed” freelancers on its sites. The boss Pete Redfern said on the BBC’s World at One that: “They are generally not actually operating for us, they are operating for a sub-contractor” so he was nobly going to “support our subcontractors by paying them on time or in advance”.

Trade journal Construction News has also said the industry has taken up the cause. It deplored the activities of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) being suspended. Construction News noted that: “While the HSE is understandably right to protect its inspectors and their families from the virus, the lack of oversight may mean that basic site safety regulations are no longer being adequately adhered to.”

Construction News also noted that in the industry it was near-impossible to stick to social distancing rules, citing the example that in order to comply with distancing regulations workers would have to lift heavier loads than they should tackle alone.

A director of one sub-contractor pointed out: “The measures that are put in place are then not compatible with the existing health and safety best practice for work on-site.

“We’re a risky industry, we [suffer] quite a lot of incidents and accidents. And now, when you’ve got limited or reduced supervision, the amount of accidents has the potential to go up. So we’re just going to be a bigger draw on already scant resources in the NHS.”

The journal also warns that the absence of HSE inspectors on-site could mean that there is little incentive for firms to ensure that workers make the right safety decisions or to raise the alarm when unsafe conditions occur.

To make matters worse, there is a global shortage of face masks. Moldex, one of the largest suppliers of PPE [personal protective equipment] has stopped taking orders in Britain. It will prioritise first responders, the health sector and critical services when more stock becomes available.

Level three filtering face-piece (FFP 3) masks essential for dust protection are being sold on eBay for around £20 each, before the crisis they were only £1 – roughly 20 times the pre-crisis cost.

In January there was dramatic increase in demand, at time when Asian manufacturers stopped exporting. To make matters worse, the Germans banned exports of certain FFP masks within the European Union. Moldex reports that the number of sometimes desperate enquiries from doctors, hospitals and aid organisations is still increasing. It’s hoped masks from Asia will begin to arrive on the market soon and help to relieve the situation.

Last Friday Unite called on the Government to appoint a minister concerned exclusively with the delivery of adequate PPE to protect workers from COVID-19, specifically mentioning the lack of supplies for the NHS and bus drivers. It claims that a lack of central government co-ordination is hampering efforts to deliver safety equipment on the scale and with the urgency needed.

Steve Turner, Unite’s assistant general secretary for manufacturing, pointed out that: “Household name businesses like JLR and the Royal Mint have released stock, provided and produced raw materials, designed, shaped, cut and assembled everything from face masks to visors, googles and medical gowns to gloves and hand sanitiser to deep cleansing materials.” Some gin distilleries have already been converted to deal with the last item.

“Like the generals of the First World War directing the troops from the safety of horseback far from the front, we now see a failure to lead from the front from today’s generals in Cabinet. We encounter competing interests, factional and departmental tensions and disjointed messages when what is desperately needed right now, not tomorrow or next week, is for government to act as one in the national interest.”

Emergency hospital opens in Docklands

By New Worker correspondent

A giant emergency hospital was opened by Prince Charles last week in London’s ExCel conference centre Docklands. The prince, himself recovering from a mild case of COVID-19, conducted the ceremony through a video-link from his Birkhall mansion on the Balmoral estate in the Scottish Highlands.

The 4,000 bed NHS Nightingale hospital was erected inside the cavernous ExCel centre in just nine days. Essentially a ‘field hospital’, it was built with the help of some 200 soldiers from the Anglian Regiment and the Gurkha Rifles, working long shifts alongside NHS staff and contractors.

The 87,328 square metres of double exhibition halls have been fitted out with the framework for more than 80 wards, each with 42 beds. Some 500 fully-equipped beds, with oxygen and ventilators, are already operational. The nearby City Airport, currently closed for normal flights due to the coronavirus plague, will be used by military planes to bring supplies and equipment to the hospital.

“It’s nothing short of extraordinary that this new hospital in London has been established from scratch in less than a fortnight,” NHS England Chief Executive Sir Simon Stevens told the media. “Now we are gearing up to repeat that feat at another four sites across the country to add to the surge in capacity in current NHS hospitals.”

Opened in November 2000, the ExCel Centre in east London was bought by the Arab-owned Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (ADNEC) in May 2008. ADNEC was originally going to charge the health service some £2–3million per month for use of the site; but this provoked an angry response from Labour and the giant GMB union that has many members in the NHS and the ambulance service.

Labour Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the deal was “an absolute outrage. Staff and patients will be disgusted at the billionaire owners. They should be prepared to offer the facilities for free”. And Lola McEvoy, a GMB organiser specialising in outsourced workers, said it was “simply wrong that the government could funnel cash to crown princes to deal with an urgent public health crisis while the future of low-paid outsourced workers hangs in the balance”.

In the end the owners soon backed down. ExCel chief executive Jeremy Rees said an initial agreement with the NHS to house the temporary Nightingale Hospital "included a contribution to some fixed costs" but "We have since decided to cover the fixed costs ourselves. The Excel London facility is fully available to the NHS and we are here to support all their needs and requirements during this crisis”.

This was repeated by Humaid Matar Al Dhaheri, the managing director and group chief executive of ADNEC, who said: “To be clear, profit has always been the furthest thing from our minds. It is our firm commitment that we will not charge a penny for the use of our facilities, and we will provide the NHS with the operational and logistical support it needs for NHS Nightingale London.”

Surreal times indeed…

by Oliver New, Secretary

(personal capacity)

Ealing Trades Union Council

It’s a very surreal time, not just because of the threat of infection. A right-wing Tory Government has finally noticed that big Magic Money Tree growing in the yard and they’ve flipped economic policy over from austerity to desperate spending and borrowing, including paying wages of inactive workers.

This wasn’t just made possible by the virus, it’s also because the trade unions and the radical leadership of the Labour Party helped to undermine the failing right-wing orthodoxy of neoliberalism.

Self-interest and the free market are no longer championed as the solution. Overnight, exploited delivery workers are recognised as key workers and previously ignored NHS staff are being extolled (although no pay rise, something we should also demand). There are, of course, many more vital workers who should be valued and paid more, including cleaners, carers, refuse collectors and food workers. Perhaps they could swap places and salaries with the City ‘trader’ parasites.

New Ways of Organising

We are all coming to terms with how we can organise with less meetings. Hopefully as this crisis unfolds solidarity and group support will win over hearts and minds. Community support groups are already springing up to support the vulnerable across communities. Many unions are also organising practical support for members in different ways. There are so many issues. Shop workers and others in constant contact with the public are at risk. Vulnerable zero-hours workers are facing poverty, little or no sick pay, limited rights at work.

Talks with employers are under way everywhere: schools are closed; privatised cleaners on the Underground are to get full sick pay if they have to self-isolate; PCS, the main civil service union, has requested a moratorium on tax office closures; talks have agreed reduced services on rail with safety provisions. Some employers have been good, others need to be named and shamed.

Meanwhile many union branches are starting to organise online with activists being asked to sign up to WhatsApp and especially to Zoom, a free app that enables video conferencing.

NHS Solidarity

Our local hospitals have been under huge pressure (how much worse if the Shaping a Healthier Future closure plans had gone through!). NHS staff at Ealing and elsewhere have been bravely working long hours. The main local hospital dealing with the virus, Northwick Park, became overloaded at one point even though we’re still in the early stages. The lack of protective clothing led to some nurses clothing themselves with bin bags.

Solidarity and support for NHS Staff has to be stepped up, especially the demand for all NHS staff to be tested. Please support the Keep Our NHS Public petition online – or see the Ealing Save Our NHS website.

There is no doubt that the weak response in the UK is heavily down to the huge under-funding of our NHS over the last decade. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, like all weak bosses in a crisis, is trying to give himself draconian powers. From a quick reading, this includes powers to lock up people for reasons of quarantine or mental health, remove the obligation of local authorities to provide care, close ports and airports, and shut down gatherings. He tried to obtain these arbitrary powers for a period of two years without renewal – even longer than the anti-terrorism or wartime powers – but under pressure from the opposition parties and some of his own MPs it was agreed that they will be subject to review every six months.