Back in the glorious days of Thatcherism, it was decided that it would be cheaper and more efficient for councils, hospitals, schools etc to 'outsource' their ancillary services -- cleaning, catering and so on. No longer would the state be responsible for employing and managing all these people.
We all know what happened: the same people got paid less to do more work, as new private companies fought to undercut each other to get contracts.
And it's got worse. I heard a fascinating but horrifying talk last week about how many of the people doing these essential jobs are actually part of our huge 'informal economy'. The companies providing, say, cleaning services to hospitals often aren't even employing their own staff: instead they get them from agencies, whose working practices may be dubious as hell but who provide that much vaunted 'flexible workforce'. You want three people today but only one tomorrow? No problem, we'll just send two of them home.
So what do you get? You get hospital cleaners with no secure contracts working for appalling pay and in terrible conditions. Some of them don't get paid sick leave, and some of them lose their jobs if they are sick. So what do they do if they are sick? They come into work, because they can't afford not to. Not everyone in this brave new outsourced world gets to stay home with Lemsip and Heat magazine.
Sick people cleaning hospitals. Now isn't that ironic?
joella
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