Workers' Stories Project

covid19

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The Covid-19 Briefings

A written submission and photographs of diary entries by Richard who is retired and lives in Edinburgh.

From the start of the Covid-19 pandemic I have been keeping a personal diary with notes on the daily Scotland and UK briefings. I am retired and have watched every briefing either live or a small number recorded. I initially included personal comments but stopped this after the first few days – there seemed nothing new for me to add so I stuck to noting the factual updates. I used a consistent reporting format to enable easier comparison between the days which followed the respective broadcast briefing format.

A significant reason for watching and recording the briefings, was due to my general outlook: I have a keen interest in history and I attempt where possible, to situate and understand contemporary events with a broader “historical perspective.” I realised that my scribbled notes would become a minor personal “cultural document,” which I had intended to pass onto my partner Marie and I’s grandson, Nathan.

It could be argued that “The Pandemic” is the most significant historical event which has occurred in my lifetime. As such, I felt that it was my “duty” to appreciate the details of the event per se, and to adhere to any guidelines based on “Science” and introduced by Government to facilitate the “elimination” of the virus. It felt good even in a very insignificant obscure way, to be “doing my bit.” I felt that the diary and corresponding daily watching of the briefings was my very small way to show my appreciation and greater insight into the significant sacrifice others were/are making to stem the outbreak. It also allowed me to experience greater empathy with previous generations who have also endured tremendous hardships, and the debt that we owe them, which is commonly forgotten or unappreciated.

Apart from the above reasons, I was inspired by my big brother John, who was 21 years my senior and alas no longer with us, who did a similar thing during the 1940s recording what was among the most significant historical events of his lifetime. These notes from history as it is happening can give future generations an insight into what it was like in the day-to-day of such events.

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Octopus Me/ Hannah’s Story

Hannah Gail Angus is 12 years old and lives in the Southside of Glasgow and is about to begin her second year at high school. Here she shares her story of being a carer at home through a written submission and artwork titled ‘Octopus Me’.

During lockdown me my brother and mum have had a few things happen to us including my mum getting coronavirus, When my mum had corona she had to quarantine in her room meaning I had to make meals for her and cash which was hard because I am vegetarian and they both eat meat luckily my mum wasn’t very hungry so she didn’t have big meals and cash usually eats hotdogs that are easy to make. My brother has autism so he can’t look after himself, I had to tell him when to brush his teeth, when to shower, when to eat and help him do his schoolwork, that was the hardest part because he was getting really stressed out and its hard to see your brother upset and not know what to do to make it better. Also I had to keep the house clean like dishes – which I hate DOING, sweeping, washing clothes, hanging them up to dry then putting them away, cleaning the bathroom and delivering food to my mum.

I’ve always helped around the house but maybe only one job a day but I didn’t have to do everything every day. I learned that it’s actually really hard to run a household and that loads of people have to do it every day with no pay or thanks. It was pretty rubbish but the worst part wasn’t worrying about my mum being sick or having to do all the dishes multiple times a day it was not being able to give her a hug and hanging out with her. She’s better now but I still help around the house because I didn’t realise how many jobs she had to do. Now I can’t wait to get back to school to hang out with my friends again and get back to some kind of normal 🙂

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I Watched

Erin Niven normally lives in Guildford for University but when lockdown began, she came home to Erskine and since then has been working at LittleInch Care Home in Erskine as a carer.  From her experience there she has written a poem titled “I Watched” and submitted a recorded version. This is Erin’s story.

I watched someone die today.

I held their hand and told them it was okay.

That I was right there.

But I thought silently to myself, none of this is fair.

That’s a cliche I suppose,

Cause everyone goes

But not in this way

With someone you barely know holding your hand as you slip away

Into the unknown

And at the end of my shift I’ll go home.

I’ll stand in the shower and I’ll wash it all away

The germs, the virus, but the sadness stays.

Because you weren’t just a name, a number, a statistic

You were a friend, a lover, a human, that’s what will stick

In my head and heart as I toss and turn

Cause after today the world seems to burn.

It’s on fire and I can’t put it out.

It makes me want to scream and it makes me want to shout.

Instead I’ll clap for our keyworkers but that doesn’t include Boris

Because if he’d done his job right we could have avoided a lot of this.

I watched someone die today but I also watched people live

I watched them laugh and cry and talk and give.

Give a shoulder to cry on or a smile in the street.

Give time to talk or time just to greet.

And they weren’t doing it for fame or for clout

They were doing it cause they care about

You. And Me.

The people that we are and the people that we’ll be.

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Designing NHS Louisa Jordan Hospital

This is a submission from David Ross, an architect and author based in Glasgow.

David was the lead architect for the NHS Louisa Jordan Hospital at the SEC Glasgow. Although his office was closed and his team were working from home for the first three weeks of that, he was on site most days with the NHS, design and contractor’s teams.

As well as designing and delivering a 1000 bed fully functioning hospital in 23 days, they had to adapt immediately to a team of people all working remotely from each other for the first time.

The image below sums up the project well he says. David is the one on the left of the photograph and he also wrote the words.

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Torn

A poem by Matthew Lynch an Ambulance Technician working for the Scottish Ambulance Service.

People are hiding from the danger, trying to take a stand, but we’re sliding into battle mask and apron to hand.

This PPE will protect you, your families will be glad, but why every time I wear it, I can’t help but feel sad. 

Keep your distance, risk assess, but what is it I’m going into at that address?

We’ve got these special masks to wear when times get rather hard, but we don’t have them at the moment so just be on your guard. 

Make the decision to whether people live or die, while we try to get this great supply.

Your colleagues may get sick, some will sadly pass, but everyone rumbles on, fighting this thing on mass. 

I cannot see my family, I will not risk them fall, but am I just a carrier, giving it to one and all?

You’ve seen the worst, you will try your best, it does very little to not feel stressed. 

Families will cry and families will mourn and we’re stuck in the middle incredibly torn. 

These days will pass, you’ll weather the storm but what’s up next because of the stresses that we’ve worn?

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Plastic Worker Stories

Patrick O’Hare is an anthropologist who studies recycling economies in South America. We are publishing Patrick’s translation of a transcript from an interview he conducted with Eduardo, a Pervuian factory worker who described his job in a plastic bag plant during the pandemic.

Eduardo (Ex trabajador de Norsac, Trujillo, Perú)

The company I worked for is the only plastic bag factory in Trujillo: it doesn’t have any competitors here. The competition is in Chiclayo, which is 4 hours away, and in Lima, which is 8 hours away. There are a lot of things that people don’t know about what it’s like inside, the exploitation, the abuse. For example, in my case I had a boss who was the worst. Because of my way of being, principally due to having lived abroad, I’ve learned to value myself. I’ve always liked working, always. I always put work first, always try to do my best, to give it 100%. But in this case, the bonus that we should have earned for dealing with waste in the factory, the boss took it. I didn’t see the funny side of that. So he could get our bonus he demanded more and more from us, he increased the speed of the machines, we almost became robots. Again and again we took out the waste: to produce, to produce, to produce. And this person treated workers badly, even those who had been there for longer than me, who had worked at the company for a long time. And it made me feel angry and impotent. When he tried to treat me badly, to intimidate me, I always put the brakes on that, because I’ve never liked to be treated badly. If there’s something that I’m not doing well, just tell me or show me how to do it better: don’t shout or swear at me. But well, what can a worker do against a boss? The worker can’t do anything because the boss is a tyrant. I lasted the time I did there because I had worked hard and learned. If I hadn’t known anything, if I hadn’t learned anything, they would have had me out of there like a shot. The other thing I was telling you about was that there was lots of work to do. Last year, at one point 50% of the workers had COVID and we kept working. Say that in one area 4 people out of 8 got COVID: that didn’t mean that the workload was halved, rather that the 4 who were left had to double their productivity. The work didn’t stop, whatever happened, it didn’t stop. And that was what the work with the rubbish was like, last year.

I’ve got a few ex-workmates who I’m in contact with and they say that now, in contrast, there is hardly any work, that it goes from bad to worse. Few workers inside the plant, and little work. What happened? The competition returned to work and took their clients back. Now that the pandemic is getting under control, the competition is levelling out and the clients who had come to us are going back to other companies. And what about us, who worked 12 hours a day all year? With the money they made from us the company bought machinery. They bought machinery like crazy and didn’t give us anything, a tip. Oh well, that’s life. In February things started to even out and our orders went down. And since the orders went down, they started to let people go. They started to look for excuses to sack people. They suspended people for no reason. In my case, for instance, I was suspended twice for things that I hadn’t done, and which I said that I hadn’t done. But arguing with them just makes things worse. I was also working there when I got COVID last year, because the majority of the workers got infected. I almost died alone because my wife and children were in Lima and I was here working. When I finally recovered and went back to work at the plant, they deducted the time that I had missed from my holiday pay. I disputed this and everything but in the end, yes, they took the time from my holiday pay, which clearly shouldn’t have been the case. Yes, in the pandemic, I was hit hard, very hard, and made it out alive by the skin of my teeth. Thank god I’m now OK. There are some long-term health effects, such as a cough, but I’m OK, despite having received no benefits from the company. They had said that they would take care of it, that any worker who got COVID shouldn’t come in to work and the business would take care of it, give us sick pay. We couldn’t get through to the number for health insurance though and we were scared, because people were dying, so many people were dying. The company had said that we shouldn’t come in if we were feeling bad, that we should do the test, and if it came out positive then we would automatically be entitled to sick pay. I got COVID, I was tested, the test result was positive, but they didn’t put me down for sick leave, they put me down as on holiday. I was owned a month’s holiday leave and they discounted 12 days from this. If I had come in and worked on those days I would have earned at least 400 soles more. I lost… but what can you do? 

As I was saying, the company started reducing its workforce, suspending people. For instance, I earned 35 soles a day but if you were suspended, they didn’t take 35 soles from you but more like 100 because you also lost the night-shift bonus, the weekend bonus and so on, so the suspension was a killer, you ended up with very little in your pay check. And the company started getting people to use up their holiday leave as well, since there wasn’t enough work. I used to work 6 months and then renew for another 6 months, then it was 3 months for another 3 months, and then finally my contract was renewed for just a month. Then I was told that my contact wouldn’t be renewed and that was that. I’ve got compañeros who say that I should take them to a tribunal but you need money for something like that. I’m not usually the kind of guy to take an employer to a tribunal; sometimes I get angry, furious though because I was only one year away from my contract being made permanent, stable. People think you because you’ve been there for a year, or 4 or 5, then you have been able to save up money but the money we had saved up with the company was given out during the pandemic. Through something called the CTS, the company has to put money into a savings account for the workers. We’re talking about around 1200 soles a year, so in 4 years almost 5,000 soles. But they offered this money to the workers during the pandemic, once last year and once this year. And I had to accept it because I had been suspended and I had to keep up with the rent. My wife was out of work and she’s only recently started working again. To avoid us getting in to debt she took the kids to live with her mother, who is 70 and who also was prevented from selling things in her little shop, her fruit and veg, her groceries. So she had to be taken care of, as well as a brother who is disabled and doesn’t earn money or receive any benefits. I’m the one who has always tried to help the family, tried not to show them when I’m in trouble, tried to ‘drink the river alone’ as the expression has it. But I can’t help feeling frustrated and impotent and that’s when I feel like taking the company to a tribunal. Because when they renewed my contract the last time they made me sign a piece of paper but I didn’t get a copy of it, and that probably covered their backs. I’m a big boy, and I’ve never worried about work before. I know that things are like this because of the pandemic, and that there are better times ahead. Next year will be better, I’m sure, when the pandemic has passed…

Back at the factory I’ve heard that they are still firing people. And what makes me most mad is that we worked like animals, we worked like hell. On the odd occasion you might get sick or miss a shift and it was fine. Now that production is down, however, they have started to bother people, to suspend them without due cause, to stop renewing their contracts. And what makes me mad is that at least I wanted to finish the year, for them at least to tell me ‘Señor Gutierrez, you know what, I’m afraid we are not going to renew your contract’. They couldn’t even do that: they simply created a list and my name was not on the list. When I went to human resources, the person who I should have been able to speak to wasn’t there. And when my contract finished they wouldn’t let me back inside the plant. What gentlemen, right? Anyway, I’ve just started a new job thank God, new compañeros, new friendships, good people. A couple who take the time to explain things – you always learn something new. The only problem is the commute – two hours there and two hours back. As I told you, I never thought that I’d find myself harvesting blueberries, something that I used to sell [in the fruit shop in Buenos Aires]. But anything can be learned, it’s never too late to learn something new. 

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Much has changed. Much has remained the same.

This story comes from a trade union organiser based in Glasgow and captures the huge protests in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, that took place globally during the initial lockdown and summer of 2020.

Much has changed during the pandemic, but much has remained the same. Global inequalities exasperated during a global pandemic.  I work as a trade union organiser based in Glasgow, and I’ve had reservations about submitting a “workers’ story”. But what brought me into the trade union movement was the fight against racism and a fight which has become even more necessary during this pandemic. Covid-19 has disproportionately taken the lives of so many people of colour. A pandemic doesn’t sweep away the struggles that continue against the deep-rooted inequalities that exist at the very core of the system within which we live. This digital collage pays tribute to all those workers and communities who continue to resist.  

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Lessons from Glendale

Jon lives in Skye and writes about the impact of the pandemic on his job as a tour guide and on the Scottish travel industry.  

Glendale, in the north west of Skye, feels like an unlikely place for a rebellion. Today, its most striking characteristic – besides its natural beauty – is its abundance of holiday homes and B&Bs, which have mushroomed in recent decades to capitalise on the island’s ever-growing tourist traffic. 

The picture was a bit different in the 1880s. In the aftermath of the Clearances in Skye, those who remained were forced to subsist on increasingly small and barren pieces of land. In 1882 the islanders fought back, trespassing on private land in the Braes and violently seeing off a party of police sent to disperse them. The crofters of Glendale followed suit with a series of trespasses and rent strikes, and the British establishment responded with a naval force. Five ringleaders from Glendale were given short prison sentences, but attracted a huge degree of public attention and sympathy, contributing significantly to the passage in 1886 of the Crofters’ Act – generally regarded as marking the end of the Highland Clearances.

Monument to the Glendale Martyrs

The story of the Glendale Martyrs, as those imprisoned became known, is still widely told and celebrated, with many retellings finding a convenient endpoint in the Crofters’ Act. But this fails to do justice to the story, and not just because the Crofters’ Act didn’t resolve the problems of land ownership in Scotland. Emphasising a concession from the establishment as a final victory threatens to whitewash the real significance of Glendale – what makes the story so remarkable is the methods, solidarity and the militancy of the crofters. Police were denied hospitality, scabs were threatened and intimidated, and the area was essentially unanimous in its rejection of the rule of law. As Roger Hutchison explains, “Glendale had effectively declared itself an autonomous community, in which the only laws were those of a broad consensus of the population, and where any attempt to impose an external jurisdiction would be resisted with force”. 

If we lose sight of this, we risk consigning the Glendale Martyrs to history. And when even reactionary historians canheap praise upon the Martyrs without a hint of irony, one can’t help but feel that the story, like so much of our history, has lost its punch.

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Today, Skye is generally depicted and marketed not as a scene of intense struggle against material injustice, but as a mystical, otherly, celtic wilderness. But even now, there is hardly a single thing about Skye – its landscape, its stunted ecosystem, its exploitative hospitality industry, its major tourist attractions or its crisis-ridden housing market – that has not been contorted beyond recognition by greed. 

Neist Point, Skye

At Glendale itself there is a monument to the Martyrs accompanied by a layby, but most visitors fly past to join the throngs of tents, tripods and selfie sticks at Neist point, jostling for the perfect photo of one of the island’s most breathtaking spots. Until recently, the cars heading to Neist Point would have been joined by minibuses from Scotland’s many tour operators, from companies big and small alike. Had the pandemic not cut short my own career as a tour guide, at some point I would have been among them. 

Scotland’s major tour operators depend upon international visitors, and have seen demand collapse almost entirely during the pandemic. But today, just as in the 1880s, the rich and powerful have had the first and last say, and the workers at the bottom have been left voiceless and abandoned. Most of the workers employed alongside me in the absurdly named Radical Travel Group – a company registered in the Virgin Islands and owned by a family of convicted tax dodgers and Tory donors – were made redundant and refused furlough by the company last year. The multimillionaire CEO of Rabbies, perhaps the best-known of the brands which frequent Neist Point, was recently the subject of a gushing sympathetic portrait by the BBC for the effect the pandemic has had on his wellbeing. The wellbeing of the scores of workers he dismissed (again, despite the availability of the furlough scheme) was not mentioned in the article. 

Tour guides know their history, and tend to take great pleasure and pride in talking about struggles against injustice throughout Scotland’s past. Yet across Scotland’s tourism industry, there has been little resistance to the way workers have been cast aside during the pandemic. And so, looking back on all of this, I’ve often found myself wondering – couldn’t we do more to join up the dots between the past and the present? When we talk about farmers literally taking up arms against police in defence of their right to occupy and work the land – just two lifetimes ago  – in between telling stories about faeries and giants and unapologetically bullshit stories (“haha, they actually believe that Loch Bà was named after the noise sheep make”), are we actually learning from them? Or are we detaching them from reality almost to the point of fiction? Put simply – why don’t we see ourselves in them?

John MacPherson of Glendale addresses a Crofters’ Meeting

Giants and faeries were once very real to the people of Skye, their existence woven into the landscape and the livelihoods made upon it. Their stories are still told, but now as a relic, with an amused and ironic distance. And just as Skye’s landscape has been disenchanted of its giants and faeries, so too has it been disenchanted of the spirit which drove officers of the law out of Glendale. These stories belong to history now – with history itself belonging to another realm, altogether separate from the neverending present in which we find ourselves.

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It might be naively optimistic to describe the pandemic as a ‘moment of reckoning’ for Scotland’s tourism industry. Industry leaders have largely escaped accountability for their treatment of workers since last March, and have only had to reckon with falling profits – many of these offset by government grants as part of Holyrood’s owner-centred ‘recovery’ strategy. But even if the threat to the industry is not existential, question marks still hang over its future – international tourism will take years to recover, and the tourism lobby’s panic over the industry’s current hiring crisis is growing more and more apparent.

Tourism itself is not going anywhere. The pandemic’s most enduring effect on the industry will be an accelerated shift towards self catering, with more campervans on the NC500 and more rural communities shattered by the spread of holiday homes. Tourism grandees, inevitably, will find ways to capitalise. The industry will continue to be held up as one of the country’s greatest commercial assets, particularly when the prospect of independence comes into view. 

For myself, much of the past year has been spent asking – what does all of this mean for workers? Is there room for an organising culture in the future of Scottish tourism?A cursory glance through the past 15 months is less than encouraging, and the obstacles to organising in such a nebulous industry are legion. And yet there is now a genuine opportunity for workers to reshape the industry in their interests. As we are already seeing in hospitality, sudden spikes in demand caused by the easing of restrictions can catch employers out, leaving them suddenly desperate for workers. This will either mean more precarity for workers, or the beginning of a new organising culture in which workers say “OK – but only on our terms”. This is up to the workers themselves – so as we begin to navigate this new landscape, maybe now is the time to pick up the mantle of the Glendale Martyrs.

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Telling Workers’ Stories during COVID19

When we sent out an appeal asking for workers’ stories in the early summer, we weren’t sure what response we’d get. At that time, we were just a couple of months into the pandemic and lockdown was still strict. Since then, a consistent trickle of submissions has come in. We’ve now published over twenty stories and there are more on the way.

The stories span retail, logistics, health and education. We’ve published a drawing by a postie, a picture by a lorry driver, a cleaner’s monologue, a poem by a care home worker, paintings by a nurse and a video by a furloughed travel agency employee. Some of the stories we’ve published reflect on the sense of danger associated with COVID19. Marion Johnstone’s drawing depicted how concerned she was delivering mail and concern for her customers. Kim wrote about the fear that the pandemic brought to an Ayrshire hospital ward: ‘I was scared, I love my job, but I never signed up to give my life for it.’ Another NHS employee, Matthew Lynch, who works as an ambulance employee, joined Kim in repudiating the ‘hero’ badge which was foisted on health service staff by the government. Instead he wondered, ‘am I just a carrier, giving it to one and all?’

Other themes that emerged include losses and grief. Erin Niven’s poem, ‘I Watched’, powerfully narrated her experience of working in a care home during COVID19, concluding that: ‘I watched someone die today but I also watched people live.’ As the pandemic has progressed and debates have moved on to opening back up and facing the long-term effects of its economic impact, the submissions we’ve received have evolved. They are still conditioned by the experience of working under COVID19 but often with an eye to what it might reveal about the future. Dee Davie’s colourful drawings demonstrate the frustrations of working from home for many white-collar workers, which are likely to continue for some time to come. Stephen Campbell’s ‘View from the frontline’ illuminated the battered landscape of welfare advice after ten years of austerity, just as Glasgow City Council announced the closure of CAB centres.

Some accounts were more optimistic. Hazel Stevens wrote about enjoying a slower pace to life under lockdown. Claire Grayland mused on both the difficulties and uniqueness of spending more time than usual with her young family. These submissions implicitly questioned divisions between paid and unpaid work. Twelve-year-old Hannah Gail Angus’ drawings reminded us that COVID19 has mad demands on the young and that work isn’t the sole preserve of adults. As the pandemic progresses a reflective quality has grown in the submissions. Steve’s recent writing about working in a supermarket exposed the longevity of COVID19. He recalled panic buying and the early days of social distancing in terms of looking back upon an earlier period. Richard’s notes from public information announcements also established a sense of personal and collective trajectory. No doubt Richard’s archive will keep growing in the coming weeks. With new lockdowns implemented there are definitely more workers’ stories to come in the politicised atmosphere that now colours debate over future measures and the continuation of furlough.

We’re far from finished and we want to hear from you. If you have a story for us, email us at  workersstoriesproject@gmail.com. In the coming months we will be taking steps towards advertising and exhibiting our submissions. Scotland’s workers have been part of a world-historic experience  and it should be told by them and on their terms.

 

 

 

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