
The Socialist 20 May 2020
Rich get handouts - workers get pay cuts

Confidence plummets in Tory strategy for Covid-19
Staff and parents fight 'back to school' plans
Transport workers & passengers mustn't pay the price
Rich get handouts - workers get pay cuts
Contract tracer speaks out: Tories' plan is outsourced chaos
Crisis in council services: Labour must fight or stand aside
Furlough cut-off could force millions back to unsafe workplaces
Safe protests against Tory corona chaos continue
Johnson claims workplaces safe but HSE cancels inspections
Postal workers' action results in double victory for union
Trade unionists organise to fight for workplace safety in big NSSN meeting
Posties walk out in Peterborough after manager tests positive
Universal Basic Income: not a solution to insecurity and poverty under capitalism
The Jungle: capitalism's remorseless attack on workers' safety and conditions
Going viral: letters to the editors
Trump, coronavirus, capitalism, and the presidential race
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Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/1087/30798
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Coronavirus
Contract tracer speaks out: Tories' plan is outsourced chaos
An NHS contact tracer
The government's new contact tracing scheme is outsourced to Serco - which subcontracted recruitment to Capita.
Both big companies have banked huge sums of public money for years, running public services for profit.
In 2012, Serco was found to have falsified records 252 times at the Cornwall out-of-hours GP service it ran.
Capita archived 148,000 patients' medical records instead of sending them to GP practices in 2015. Despite their record of corner-cutting, bungling and profiteering, the Tories are rewarding them with even more contracts during this crisis.
Testing large numbers of people is the vital first step if Covid-19 is to be controlled without mass vaccination. Medical and practical support is needed for those testing positive.
Contact tracing is then essential, to test people who may be infected but don't yet know it. If a contact tests positive they can isolate instead of spreading the virus.
An effective contact tracing scheme needs local knowledge and local services. Years of austerity cuts have stripped these bare.
Nevertheless, there are still council environmental health and trading standards officers, public health specialists, school nurses, sexual health nurses and health visitors doing similar work.
They have valuable experience and know their local areas. Recently retired community nurses and GPs, and locum GPs, could also be very helpful. A group in Sheffield has successfully shown this.
Disastrous decision
One of many disastrous government decisions was stopping contact tracing - on 12 March. Unchecked, virus spread accelerated.
Now the Tories are desperately trying to run to catch up. But their legs are tied to their capitalist roots, so they have awarded the contract for a new centralised contact tracing scheme to Serco, rather than properly fund existing local public services.
18,000 contact tracers are being recruited - 15,000 as call handlers, most without clinical experience, on zero-hour contracts, paid just £9.42 an hour, and with one day's training.
Without detailed local knowledge, their task will be more difficult. The intensity of the outbreak varies from place to place, even within the same city.
GPs fear these contact tracing results won't be passed to them as the new service is outside the NHS structure.
Results from the Deloitte-run drive-in testing centres and 'Lighthouse Laboratories', separate from NHS laboratories, have also not been shared with local authority public health departments or GPs. This leaves them in the dark instead of coordinating the response in their area.
This scheme follows a pattern - the government announces large sums of money to fight the virus, most of which is then funnelled to big business.
As well as Serco, Capita and Deloitte, G4S has had contracts at Nightingale hospitals built by Interserve, and pharmaceutical, biotech and medical supplies companies have all had big payments from public funds.
All these big corporations should be nationalised and integrated into a democratically run, well-funded NHS, meeting every local community's needs.
In this issue
What we think
Confidence plummets in Tory strategy for Covid-19
Resist school reopening
Staff and parents fight 'back to school' plans
Make transport safe
Transport workers & passengers mustn't pay the price
Socialist Party news and analysis
Rich get handouts - workers get pay cuts
Contract tracer speaks out: Tories' plan is outsourced chaos
Crisis in council services: Labour must fight or stand aside
Furlough cut-off could force millions back to unsafe workplaces
Safe protests against Tory corona chaos continue
Johnson claims workplaces safe but HSE cancels inspections
Workplace news and analysis
Postal workers' action results in double victory for union
Trade unionists organise to fight for workplace safety in big NSSN meeting
Posties walk out in Peterborough after manager tests positive
Universal Basic Income: not a solution to insecurity and poverty under capitalism
Readers' opinion
The Jungle: capitalism's remorseless attack on workers' safety and conditions
Going viral: letters to the editors
International socialist news and analysis
Trump, coronavirus, capitalism, and the presidential race
Related links:
Health, Covid and the vaccine: It's a class issue
The Tory blame game: scapegoating the working class - 100% pay for all now
Mass testing - we need trade union oversight and full pay for all
Covid vaccines only first step - fight job losses, austerity and 'virus' of capitalism
We need union action, not platitudes!
Tories target universities in free speech shakedown
Tories admit guilt for asylum seeker neglect
NHS white paper: no solution to failed Tory policies
West London Socialist Party: The fight for women's health to be a trade union issue
Boot private companies out of our NHS
Social care: End privatisation and let workers decide how it's run
Tory consultation on home-use abortion pills
PPE contracts: It pays to have friends in high places
Facebook v Australian government: nationalise the bosses' media!