UNISON member Christian Groves (pictured) is an HGV driver for Haringey’s refuse collection team. Throughout COVID-19, he’s felt more supported by the public than his employer.
“Local residents have been so lovely. They’ve been coming out with drinks for us, food and little bags with rubber gloves and hand sanitiser. To be honest, the public have been giving us better equipment than our employer.”
“Some people have baked us cakes and kids have drawn us little posters with ‘thank you’ on. It makes you feel really appreciated.”
As a refuse collector, social distancing is impossible. Christian’s job requires spending whole days, shoulder-to-shoulder in a lorry cab with three or four colleagues, visiting thousands of homes a day. He’s worried about catching the virus through his work.
“It’s scary for me. I’ve got four young kids and a wife. I don’t want to take anything home to them. My youngest is only a year old. Every day I think: ‘How do I know I haven’t got anything?’ Or the two sat next to me, how do I know?
“A lot of us have young kids, but you go into our team room at work and there’s 30 to 40 blokes, all in the size of a small class room.
“We’ve had no communication from our firm about the virus or how to stay safe really. It doesn’t seem they care much about us. They were talking about the lorries being deep cleaned once a week, but that hasn’t happened, and face masks only turned up a week ago. They’ll give them to us if we ask for them, but they’re not medical masks, they’re painter-decorator masks. I’ve been buying my own off eBay.”
That’s not the only in which Christian has taken matters into his own hands to try and take precautions at work.
“Every day now I pick up my loaders from their houses in the dust cart before we start work, so they’re not travelling to the office or in the team room. The tip’s an hour and a half journey there and back, and I don’t let them come with me in that trip.
“If there’s any way I can cut down the time we spend together in that lorry then I will. That was my suggestion to the management, and I’m doing all I can do.”
But Christian still “feels like nothing’s changed for us workwise: the management haven’t put any precautions in place. It’s so different out there, it’s so weird at the moment, but I’m doing all I can do.
“We’ve all just got to carry on and do our best to stay safe really, but it’s a shame that the workers are coming up with the solutions.”
The article Baking for bin men: life as a refuse collector in COVID-19 first appeared on the UNISON National site.
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