Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
EE is making it very clear why we can’t leave it to the bosses to control our response to the corona virus crisis.
Not content with dragging its call-centre workforce in to work in the midst of the pandemic (including sales and debt collection), EE is now demanding that many of its high-street shop workers travel back to their workplaces from Thursday.
The company told its confused and worried workforce that they will be answering customer queries online – a task that cannot possibly occupy all of the workers who have been called in and could have been easily performed from home.
Light dawned when management told workers that anyone who didn’t want to come in wouldn’t have to…but they also wouldn’t be paid! Bosses are demanding that workers use up their annual leave or take the time off unpaid.
Many will go in to work, unless the company is forced to reconsider: few low-paid workers can afford to see their wages cut even further. No-one should be forced to travel unnecessarily in the midst of the pandemic. Doing so will expose EE workers to a greater risk of catching the disease, accelerate its spread and increase the strain on the NHS, which is already hopelessly overburdened thanks to brutal cuts and the inept response of the UK and devolved governments.
No worker, either, should have their income cut if they refuse unreasonable requests from management that put their safety at risk. There are reports of police forces taking action against individuals even for exercising too much, but big companies are allowed to continue recklessly risking safety in order to maximise their profits.
Any union that takes action during this crisis should be supported: they’re challenging the right of profiteering capitalists to run the response to the pandemic. The CWU has won recognition in EE in its call centres and Unite has members in some of the shops. Our trade-union movement should provide leadership in the face of these threats. Big business can’t be trusted not to risk our safety for the sake of increasing profits. All workers, whether they’re working at home, in isolation, are ill or in their customary place of work should get full pay. The TUC should organise a campaign to demand action against firms like EE who are putting their workers and wider society at risk and councils should be prepared to override companies’ decisions on health and safety grounds.
Unfortunately, most councils are adding to the problems rather than taking decision action to tackle them. After years of withholding the funding that Cardiff’s schools need to pay their costs, Cardiff Council, for example, now says that it can’t provide places in school for all of the workers designated as “key workers” by the government. Only the children of NHS workers, care workers and workers in the emergency services will be given a place – and then only if both parents are key workers! The council’s actions are putting the maintenance of many essential services like transport and the food supply at risk, and creating extra stress and costs for workers.
EE is exploiting the fact that it is carrying out “key work” in the telecoms industry to try and cut its wage bill and boost its profits. Councils like Cardiff, run by politicians who are in the pockets of big business, are heaping the cost of the crisis on the shoulders of workers instead of making the bosses pay, and are risking our safety. That’s why it should be up to workers organisations like trade unions to negotiate what is genuine “key work” which needs to be performed despite the pandemic, and what work should be suspended in order to limit the spread of the infection.
If the work that companies like EE and BT are carrying out are so key, then it’s too important to leave them in the hands of profiteers, and the whole telecoms industry should be nationalised to ensure access for everyone.
