{"id":21447,"date":"2020-05-15T13:49:04","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T12:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=21447"},"modified":"2020-05-18T12:07:15","modified_gmt":"2020-05-18T11:07:15","slug":"another-world-is-possible-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=21447","title":{"rendered":"\u00e2\u20ac\u0098Another world is possible\u00e2\u20ac\u2122"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

By now, the failings of the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s PPE regime are now well\u00c2\u00a0known. Workers are suffering and dying from the\u00c2\u00a0government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s failure to prepare for a pandemic. This has lead\u00c2\u00a0to shortages in our NHS, social care and other key industries.<\/p>\n

But it is one thing hearing about these failings, and it is another having been in hospital and seen how much is going wrong in hospitals with PPE.<\/p>\n

I was hospitalised with Covid-19 recently after suffering severely\u00c2\u00a0with the virus\u00c2\u00a0and I would not be here without the care and attention shown to me by NHS heroes from around the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Danny Freeman in Kingston Hospital <\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

In Kingston Hospital,\u00c2\u00a0where I was hospitalised,\u00c2\u00a0a memo was issued just days after I was discharged warning that PPE was running so low that all non-critical wards were asked not to use disposable gowns, and, even with this change, it was predicted that the supply of disposable gowns would run out by the end of the week.<\/p>\n

Luckily, other London hospitals were able to share their supply of PPE with Kingston Hospital \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but this is not the way we should be treating doctors, nurses and hospital workers risking their lives to help people recover from Covid-19.<\/p>\n

Even when\u00c2\u00a0Kingston Hospital did have supplies, the PPE that they had was inadequate for the demands of a pandemic \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it was ineffective and uncomfortable.\u00c2\u00a0At Kingston the blue gowns came in medium and large. The medium was in effect a large so that nurses had to ruff it up and tie it around their waist and try to pull sleeves up. Why can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t there be garments manufactured which\u00c2\u00a0actually fit?<\/p>\n

Normally in hospital my understanding is that doctors, nurses, physios wear different colour uniforms\/scrubs to help differentiate each other in emergency situations, yet at the moment everyone is wearing the same\u00c2\u00a0battle-ready\u00c2\u00a0blue uniforms. It would be easy to wear coloured armbands to differentiate and immediately show who is who on the\u00c2\u00a0Covid\u00c2\u00a0battlefield.<\/p>\n

The 3m masks seemed popular with some nurses but others thought they were too full on which some didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like. One nurse in my ward told me they had run out of these and now said they had these really strange shaped white masks which were slightly pointed and pinched down on their noses so were really uncomfortable and the nurses had nicknamed them duck bills because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly what they look like.<\/p>\n

The other normal blue masks, with the four or five folds are much thinner and I think they replace them every couple of\u00c2\u00a0hours but\u00c2\u00a0they can also be uncomfortable.\u00c2\u00a0One nurse told me that the ribbon at the top had minute fibres which were shedding from it and were going up her nostrils and really irritate her nose and affecting her breathing.<\/p>\n

Johnson seems to think of himself as a Churchillian leader \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he has written an autobiography of Churchill and appears to\u00c2\u00a0even\u00c2\u00a0try\u00c2\u00a0to mimic his mannerisms. But for all the failures of strategy and protective equipment in this pandemic, a more accurate wartime analogy is WW1, where many British casualties were caused by the failures of the ruling class.<\/p>\n

Day and night Johnson and his cabinet are blowing their whistles in the trenches and sending wave after wave of our NHS heroes from around the world \u00e2\u20ac\u015bover the top\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 with no protection at all. Those that survive then clamber back into the trench to wait for the whistle to be blown again the following day.<\/p>\n

Doing \u00e2\u20ac\u0098their duty\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I thanked three of my nurses in my ward for their help and support, they told me it was what they signed up for, it was their duty.\u00c2\u00a0In acts of\u00c2\u00a0solidarity, NHS\u00c2\u00a0workers\u00c2\u00a0from across the whole hospital are voluntarily working in Covid-19 wards to help and support their colleagues in these highly dangerous environments.\u00c2\u00a0Again, they saw it as their duty to\u00c2\u00a0help their colleagues\u00c2\u00a0and our\u00c2\u00a0society\u00c2\u00a0in this time.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Danny and two fellow patients thank their NHS heroes<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Well, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s our duty as trade unionists\u00c2\u00a0to protect all of our key workers, Unite assistant general secretary, Steve Turner, and other comrades in Unite have been calling for a minister for PPE\u00c2\u00a0and Testing, and the government recently announced the appointment of a PPE \u00e2\u20ac\u0098tsar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

But we are still seeing major problems with PPE from out of date stock to the debacle of the delayed RAF flight from Turkey which when it eventually arrived in the UK all 400,000 gowns were impounded after it was found they did not confirm to UK standards.<\/p>\n

As Steve Turner says,\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOur members are desperate to play their part. To use their skills, engineering and manufacturing expertise to ramp up production \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00c2\u00a0under licence from existing UK manufacturers that simply can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cope with demand or secure essential supplies given the unprecedented international demands on raw materials and components. And of course, our workplaces will be safe and operating in accordance to the most stringent public health guidance.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bMillions of PPE kits are urgently needed to supply UK industry, but there is also the scope for our manufacturers to export excess to wherever it is needed.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe simply need the government to give the signal for UK Plc to swing into action. Unions are about keeping people in work, secure and safe, so it is intensely frustrating to have plants and people standing idle and underused when they could be put to great use in defence of the public\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s health.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

Much more to be done<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But there is still much more to be done by the government: key workers are risking their lives to keep our society going, but the government seems not to appreciate this. They were unwilling to prepare adequately for a pandemic due to the\u00c2\u00a0brutalising\u00c2\u00a0and ideologically-driven\u00c2\u00a0austerity of the last 10 years. But they were willing to pursue a reckless herd immunity strategy that, in Johnson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own words, would lead to many more families losing loved ones before their time.<\/p>\n

In response to the easing of the lockdown and the confused mixed messages given by Johnson and his government on May 10, and the written guidance given the following day, Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey responded, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bImportantly, this guidance\u00c2\u00a0signals to employers that they should work with trade union specialists to keep workplaces and workers safe.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bUnion health and safety representatives are highly skilled and ready to assist the national effort to keep workers safe. \u00c2\u00a0Again, I say to the government, there are tens of thousands of union safety specialists than can be enlisted to assist employers and the Health and Safety Executive in a concerted approach\u00c2\u00a0to eliminate the spread of the\u00c2\u00a0virus and fulfil the prime minister’s call to make workplaces corona virus secure.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

Len continued, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bUnite has lost transport members to this awful disease.\u00c2\u00a0 In their honour and in honour of all those workers who have died because of corona, we ask that much\u00c2\u00a0more is done\u00c2\u00a0to ensure that working\u00c2\u00a0people are safe to get to and from work including staggered work times.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bCrucially, employers must\u00c2\u00a0not pressurise workers to imperil themselves and others by crowding on to buses, trains or tubes.\u00c2\u00a0Unite will protect every member who decides that they cannot work because either their journey to their workplace\u00c2\u00a0or the workplace itself are not safe,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure that when history books are written in the future they will record \u00e2\u20ac\u0098Butcher Boris\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Johnson and his cabinet as the most incompetent and evil government the Tory party has ever inflicted upon us.<\/p>\n

Our NHS heroes from around the world really are Lions and Lionesses led by donkeys.<\/p>\n

Another world is possible. We must make sure we grasp this moment, reset the world and make it a better, fairer place to live, work and be for all. We owe it to our amazing key workers and NHS heroes those who have tragically died during this pandemic, ourselves and our kids futures.<\/p>\n

Danny Freeman is Unite London and Eastern region’s education organiser <\/strong>@DannyUnite<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Kingston Hospital,\u00c2\u00a0where I was hospitalised,\u00c2\u00a0a memo was issued just days after I was discharged warning that PPE was running so low that all non-critical wards were asked not to use disposable gowns, and, even with this change, it was predicted that the supply of disposable gowns would run out by the end of the week.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,1308],"tags":[1295,111,160,80,1316,603],"wps_subtitle":"Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unleash our \u00e2\u20ac\u0098lions and lionesses\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 NHS heroes from the Tory donkeys and build a better, fairer world, writes Unite\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Danny Freeman","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21447"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21447"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27109,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21447\/revisions\/27109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}