New TUC survey casts doubt over Covid safety of UK workplaces

A new study from the TUC has revealed that many workplaces in the UK are still not following crucial coronavirus safety guidelines to protect workers – despite the government urging the public to return to offices.

The Prime Minister has advised everyone to return to their places of work to help the country “get back on its feet”, and Matt Hancock has claimed that the “vast majority” of workplaces are Covid secure.

But new research conducted by BritainThinks for the trade union federation last month suggests in fact that many UK workplaces have not been made safe by employers during the coronavirus pandemic.

In the survey of over 2,100 workers, only 46% said their places of work had introduced social distancing measures and just 38% said their bosses had carried out the legally required coronavirus risk assessment.

Workers on low pay and in precarious jobs are most at risk of unsafe conditions, the TUC poll suggests, with 27% of those earning less than £15,000 a year and 38% of those in insecure work reporting zero action from employers to reduce the risk of transmission.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Making sure workplaces are safe is key to preventing the spread of Covid-19 and getting our economy back on its feet. If we don’t deal with the public health crisis, we won’t be able to deal with the economic one.”

“Rather than trying to bully people back into offices, ministers should change the law to require all employers to publish their risk assessments and make sure workplaces are safe.”

“And they should crack down on bad bosses who risk their workers’ lives. As we saw with Leicester, it only takes one bad boss playing fast and loose with workers’ safety to shut down an entire city.”

Leicester was hit with a lockdown in July of this year, partly due to the unsafe conditions of the city’s clothing factories, some of which paid workers less than £3.50 an hour and had no measures in place to stop Covid transmission.

The study also showed that 32% of workers were worried unsafe conditions would lead to them exposing other members of their household to coronavirus. The same number said they had already complained to their employer about the issue.

The news comes after the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) decided to outsource its coronavirus workplace inspection process to private firms, whose staff have neither the same training nor powers to punish bad employers as HSE inspectors.

Although the government has promised extra financial support for the UK’s health and safety regulator to help it keep workplaces Covid-free, a one-year cap on the funding has forced the HSE to open tendering to private contractors.

On the HSE’s decision to use untrained inspectors, O’Grady added: “Big outsourcing companies have failed the UK on test and trace – and now this government is going to give them more money to fail again, on workplace safety.

“Funding for the HSE has been cut by over a third in the past decade. The government should reverse those cuts and provide HSE with sustained funding so they can recruit and train proper workplace inspectors, inspect more workplaces, and prosecute bad bosses.”

The TUC’s criticism comes after a HSE investigation received a report of a “workplace concern” in a government office and found that it was failing to implement safety measures. There have been two confirmed Covid-19 cases in the Leeds workplace.

Workers at the Department of Work and Pensions office were pictured gathering closely around a colleague’s desk, breaking the government’s social distancing guidelines, and a whistleblower said he was concerned for his health.

Labour has criticised Downing Street’s partial privatisation of the Covid test and trace programme after one company, Serco, admitted it was only managing to reach 60% of people who had been in contact with someone with coronavirus.

Serco and Sitel, the two private firms hired to help run the national test and trace system, are set to receive over £1bn for their work on the scheme after their contracts were renewed by the government in August.