Percy is a cleaner at King’s college with 5 years on the job, and a UVW executive committee member, who’s been sacked after a disciplinary hearing he refused to attend due to observing the government’s social distancing guidelines but which King’s College proceeded with anyway in his absence without even letting him know or inviting him to attend via phone.

The hearing would have had 8 people cramped together in a small room in complete disregard of the government’s instructions about social distancing.

Percy has explained the reaons for not attending and asked for the decision to be overturned and the hearing to be reconvened via phone or in person after Lockdown.

However, King’s have scandalously refused this request and have insisted on upholding his dismissal which now leaves Percy out of work and out of pocket in the middle of a pandemic!

He will formally appeal but it could take months to hear and deliver an outcome. We will also take King’s to tribunal but that could take over a year.

This is utterly shameless conduct by King’s HR team.

They need to be held to account.

Everyone deserves the right to a fair hearing and should not have that right denied them for respecting the government’s public health guidelines about social distancing.

Text from UVW Twitter

Please write to Christopher Wellcome as below at the following address telling him to reinstate Percy and circulate this notice in the union and beyond:

Model email

To: Christopher.welcome@kcl.ac.uk
Subject: Reinstate Percy Now

Dear Mr Wellcome,

I am writing on behalf of [union/branch/organisation] to register our dismay about the dismissal of Percy, a member of the cleaning staff at King’s College London. 

As we understand it, King’s have summarily dismissed Percy following his non-attendance at a disciplinary hearing. Some questions need to be answered with urgency:

1)        Why was King’s attempting to hold a disciplinary meeting in the first place? In the midst of an epidemic, frontline workers like cleaning staff should be offered unconditional support and solidarity, not faced with punitive disciplinary action.

2)        What material conditions have been put in place to ensure the health and wellbeing of the cleaning staff at King’s College London? We note with extreme concern that by the 14^th March – when all college buildings were still operational – there were at least five confirmed cases at King’s.

3)        Given the presence of covid-19 among the community at King’s, why didn’t the disciplinary meeting conform to social distancing guidelines? Why weren’t alternatives put in place, for example to hold the meeting via phone?

This failure of communication indicates to us a broader failure of communication around the covid-19 outbreak. We understand that members of staff at Kings– from cleaners to lecturers – have been justifiably alarmed about their working conditions. To hold a meeting in Percy’s absence and to terminate his contract is at the least disrespectful, and in the current climate strikes us as cruel and entirely unnecessary.

We note here that Percy was a prominent campaigner for the movement of the cleaning staff to become in-house employees of King’s. To be rewarded like this for his efforts reflects extremely badly on the University. The trade union movement are publicising Percy’s case and stand in solidarity with him and his colleagues.

We urge you to reinstate Percy with immediate effect.

Sincerely,

On behalf of [union/branch/organisation]

A member of PCS Independent Left who is active in DWP writes about the need to use the COVID-19 crisis to challenge cuts and closures.

The COVID-19 crisis has shown that there is very little slack in the DWP and its ability to respond to such crises is thrown into sharp relief. This isn’t any wonder when you consider that the department’s budget has been cut from £9.1 billion in 2009-10 to £6.1 billion in 2019-20.

Also the flexible nature of the UK economy, zero hours contracts, millions of workers categorized as self-employed, precarious work etc, has meant employers have dodged their responsibilities to pay their employees sick pay and endangered all of us by forcing people that do not need to go to work, to go, otherwise they may have no money to feed themselves and their families.

Almost an extra 1 million claims to Universal Credit were made in the first two weeks of the crisis. Normally 4,000 claims are made each day. DWP has started to recruit in order to deal with the claims. We are told that staffing will be increased by roughly 10%. East London is one of the areas that has been given permission to go first at it has seen the greatest impact in terms of claims and staff going off.

DWP has recently closed the Balham Processing centre which housed 228 staff.

These staff could have helped process the outstanding claims. Management are pressing ahead with the closure of the Stratford, Hackney and Watford processing centres, meaning there will be no Universal Credit processing centres in London.

Management are proposing to site the new staff in Jobcentres, despite the fact that PCS has raised concerns about overcrowding and social distancing, and they are refusing to post new staff to benefit centres, where there is more space. The reason for this? They are still planning to go ahead with the closures so if they put new staff in the centres and then close them, that is more staff they will have to re-deploy or pay redundancy.

London regional officials have raised this matter with the DWP Group office only to be told it has already been raised with the employer. We are not told what the employers’ response is and members have not been informed that this has been raised. This is an issue PCS needs to go on the offensive about. When DWP and the Government tell us we are key workers, they are right. The case for more service centres to cope precisely with this sort of an emergency will be a very easy one to make post-crisis.

A PCS Independent Left activist discusses the work being done to pressure the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in relation to the COVID-19 crisis.

Should HSE be using the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) to enforce on COVID-19 risks in the workplace?

YES, we believe it should.

In 2003 HSE published guidance on controlling the risks of infection at work, which can be found here.  Specifically, at paragraph 6 the document states:

‘Although your employees may well pick up infections from workmates (just as they might from their friends and family outside work) – these infections are not your responsibility under health and safety law. This is because the infection is just as likely to be caught outside the workplace as in it.’

This guidance was written for circumstances where government had not imposed restrictions on movement.

The current government restrictions on movement of individuals mean that when followed the infection is now less likely to be caught outside the workplace.  That is the whole point of the new restrictions.

HSWA provides for enforcement on the basis of exposure to risk, not on the basis of any actual harm, or any causal link between the risk and the harm.  This is particularly true when pursuing health related risks such as infections, legionella or hand arm vibration.

HSE enforces in cases where a risk is not created by the workplace, but where the nature of the workplace increases the risk of exposure.  For instance, exposure to sunlight for workers in the construction and agricultural sectors where the conduct of the business means workers have to work outside. In this current situation, it is the way that the employer organises the work that creates the risk: lack of provision of hand washing facilities that are adequate for this situation, inadequate cleaning regimes, and poor arrangements for travel to sites, use of changing rooms and mess facilities to allow distancing. Where that risk can be managed, we can have no objection from a HSWA perspective, and whether the undertaking is essential or not is a public health matter.

There has been a lot of external noise on this issue from politicians, journalists and trade unions, including a letter to the HSE from the STUC.

PCS HSE National branch along with Prospect and FDA have tried to discuss this with HSE.  A joint letter sent from all three unions to HSE on 25 March 2020 and a further letter was sent 30 March 2020.

Attending workplaces increases the risk of exposure to COVID-19, especially whilst workers in non-essential industry continue to be forced to use crowded public transport and then work at close proximity on building sites, in factories and in call centres.

That brings the risk of COVID-19 in the workplace legitimately within scope of HSWA and HSE’s enforcement remit and PCS must keep pushing for action.