Month: Apr 2020

Unsafe Workplace – NEC tell reps & members “it’s up to you”

Covid 19 poses a serious risk to all workers. This is especially true for those at work during the crisis, which is why we demand the highest Health and Safety workplace standards. 

The question facing us is how do we respond, if and when, despite local union reps best efforts, the employer has not done enough to ensure that our working environment is safe.

A clue to this is provided by PCS reps and members at Paisley Jobcentre on Friday 24th April. They had an outdoors union meeting (with proper social distancing arrangements in place) following an outbreak of Covid-19 in their office. 

More than twenty staff, whose numbers had already been drastically reduced by the need to keep home and safe colleagues with underlying health conditions, voted that their office was not safe to work in. After the vote members stayed out of the building for several hours while they waited for the union’s negotiators to get a deal out of senior managers.

National managers, however, were unwilling to budge. They insisted, despite the concerns raised by staff at the site and by Health and Safety reps, that a thorough clean had been conducted and that staff should return to work.

A compromise was eventually reached that allowed staff to go home on full flexi credits with the office closed for 72 hours. Local union reps were applauded for their work.

Union reps at Paisley acted decisively to protect themselves and their members. They correctly determined that the health and safety of members was paramount and collectively refused to work in a workplace they deemed unsafe.

Had the Paisley reps and members relied on advice and a lead from the union nationally they would have been disappointed and still waiting.

A PCS Briefing “Coronavirus – can employees refuse to attend the work place” has been recently issued. At the end of a lengthy cataloguing of bits of legislation on health and safety the Briefing concludes with a statement bereft of guidance and leadership -. “This briefing provides general information about statutory rights which are available to all employees in the UK. We are NOT advising you to do, or refrain from doing, anything.” 

Current health and safety legislation provide only limited protection. The anti-union laws are another obstacle.However the health and safety of union members must always come first.

The incident at Paisley highlighted the need for the DWP Group Executive to secure arrangements which give better protection to members. Something BLN members on the GEC have been arguing for.

Other areas have successfully achieved this. For example a “Serious Incident Protocol” has been negotiated by the PCS Group Executive in HMRC. It can be found here. It’s not perfect. The Government advise self-isolation if a member of your household has (or is suspected to have) Covid 19. Unfortunately, the employer refuse to apply the same standards to contact with a person at work. However, it has forced the closure of several HMRC buildings for periods of up to a week. The DWP GEC should negotiate a similar or better agreement for our members, and the NEC should try to get a similar or improved agreement to cover all our workplaces.

The NEC also needs to act more decisively to ensure staff (our members) and reps are in a safe place whether at home or in the workplace.

BLN members were active in the Paisley Jobcentre demand for a safe workplace and in the action supporting this demand. We have no hesitation in recommending reps follow their example.

PCS should demand of management that they make all the workplace adjustments needed to ensure workers safety. These include:

• Everyone should work from home unless their work is both critical and can’t be done at home.

• All staff with underlying health conditions, live with someone with underlying health conditions or have caring responsibilities must work from home or be placed on paid special leave

• Where office attendance is necessary, agreed social distancing of at least 2m in all areas of the office – no compromise on capacity.

• Thoroughly cleaned premises and equipment

• Hand sanitisers available at every point where they are needed

Where demands are not met to the satisfaction of reps and members a car park meeting should be held (with proper social distancing arrangements in place) to agree collectively how to respond. Stick together until a solution is agreed and accepted by members. Yes, unity is our strength in these difficult times. A lesson it seems the national leadership of the union has yet to learn. Our members’ safety is not for sale.

Bold Response Required Against Government On The Run

The Tory government have had to acknowledge the key role played by PCS members in delivering vital services alongside the rest of the public sector and also low paid private sector workers and the “extraordinary efforts” we are making.

Extraordinary efforts that have been made very much more difficult as a result of the year on year cuts and under-funding that have impacted on our staffing levels and ability to deliver services. PCS reps are having to respond to the crisis management trying to undo over a decade of austerity – recruiting extra staff, trying to get decent IT equipment so that our members can work safely from home at the same time as fighting to keep our workplaces safe.

It is critical that the trade union movement clearly stand up for the working class and our communities and demand and fight for what is needed to get us through this pandemic. Mass pressure on the Tory Government can help deliver what is needed – as we have seen with widespread outcry over demands over income for workers who face the temporary or permanent loss of their jobs and income forced the government to introduce some measures.  However there are still many who fall through the gaps in these measures and in many cases the Tories are letting big business off the hook who should be paying their workers.

The trade union movement should be at the forefront in developing the demands that are needed to support the working class, protect our health and safety and fully resource the services that are needed. We have had to fight hard for our private sector members in our workplaces to get the same protection and their normal pay and conditions when they are unable to be in the workplace, as our public sector members.

It is surprising to see that just at the point when our arguments about how vital the work that our members do is really hitting home, that Serwotka and co are promoting the idea that we park our key policies and instead put forward watered down demands at this time of crisis.  We do not trust the Tories and their sudden commitment to public services and heaping praise on our members, to remember all this when the pandemic is over. And in any case fine words butter no parsnips.

The worries our members normally face day in day out over low pay, lack of staff, high workloads, threats to close offices and losing their jobs still remain and make it even more difficult to deliver services in the even more stressful, pressurised crisis we are working in. It should be straightforward to put forward demands to address these concerns.so that our members can focus on delivering public services. 

Our union could play a key role as we did in 2011 in giving a lead and uniting public sector trade union members. A straightforward call for a 10% pay rise for all public sector workers would reduce the need for lengthy talks and recognise members are working flat out delivering vital public services despite our pay being held down for years.  We need investment in full staffing levels for the public sector and the equipment that is needed to deliver services safely. Planned cuts like the office closure programme should be reversed and stopped and the threat removed recognising the fact that jobs and services are needed in local communities to deal with the coronavirus crisis but also into the future. Trade unions should be demanding that no workers furloughed or laid off during the crisis should lose their overall pay and also for a substantial rise in benefits linked to a rise in the national minimum wage to £12 per hour (£15 in London)

We cannot afford to have the leaders of our movement lining up behind the national effort and its failed leadership under Tories whose primary focus is protecting the interests of big business and not the 99% in our workplaces and communities. We need to provide a lead to the working class and articulate the demands on what is necessary to protect people and deliver the services. We cannot shy away from demanding the resources that are needed to undo the damage that decades of cuts have made to deal with this crisis but also for quality public services to deliver our vital services into the future.