(06 Oct 2020, 8:58 pm)mb134 wrote Yes? Of course hospitals are regularly cleaned. Deep cleaning absolutely is effective - or at least it's far more effective than doing sod all.
Clearly there has been a failure though. A further 3 trips have been cancelled since the earlier post, so I'm assuming that's at least another driver off. I appreciate that drivers get ill, and that they have to take responsibility, but I don't see how some of the things mentioned in that article are anything but management's fault? At the moment they should be ensuring that drivers are always in a safe environment - yet they haven't bothered enforcing cleaning the two areas where they spend 99% of their shift (the bus and break room)?
Then the point you make about them all being adults. By that logic leadership teams are completely redundant then? They are there to set examples and make the workplace safe. By not informing drivers that they need to self isolate, they've also destroyed any trust between the drivers and the management team - if you had been exposed to someone who'd tested positive for a potentially fatal disease then I'm sure you'd want to know.
Yep - a further three trips have been cancelled tonight since my earlier post (including a last trip of the day).
Seems that they're going for the approach of "let's get the money in the morning, sod anyone wanting to get home".
Cleaning is a funny one as in principle it should help but it can be counter productive at the same time as it gives a false hope and can make people become less cautious. Unless you are cleaning something every hour or so then it does very little to help overall as say if some driver has Coronavirus and he goes into the break room whether the place was cleaned 2 month ago or 2 hours ago it doesn't make too much difference and by the time it's probably going to be cleaned again the virus will have died anyway on any surfaces (s)he has touched. That said though it's not an excuse to not clean however.
That said people not being aware of the coronavirus so they can self isolate isn't acceptable but blame the government here as it's the guidelines as this is where track and trace should come into play and you should continue to go to work unless a family member shows symptoms or if track and trace contact you then that's when you should isolate.
You should help your employees self-isolate if they:
- have coronavirus symptoms and are waiting for a test result
- have tested positive for coronavirus
- are a member of the same household as someone who has symptoms or has tested positive for coronavirus
- have been in close recent contact with someone who has tested positive and received a notification to self-isolate from NHS Test and Trace, either from a contact tracer or via the NHS COVID-19 app
That's the official guidelines and the bit in red is why they're not telling people to self isolate - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/nhs-test-and...e-guidance
Arriva legally haven't done anything wrong and are just following guidelines there's nothing there about you need to police stuff (that's an adults job to make up their mind) and the self isolating is upto the track and trace team which is something for the politics thread. Whether that's right or wrong in reality is a different matter but I wouldn't say killing morale by shouting at people every 30 seconds while drivers are having their breaks is the best approach either and creating a managers / supervisors vs drivers split within the depot (mind that might happen anyway) and they simply can't disclose that a worker has the virus.
I'm not defending Arriva here but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a similar case at most depots or even any staff canteens and it's more that Darlington has been unlucky rather than they're worse than everywhere else but that is speculation I admit.