What’s An Essential Worker?

by Les May

IN the late 1940s and early 50s my dad worked for Rochdale Cleansing Department.  At different times he had three jobs; he worked ‘on the tubs’, which meant he went round the outlying districts collecting half barrel sized containers for disposal at the sewage works of what is euphemistically called ‘night soil’, he was also a road sweeper and a dustman.

Our house was filled with books which had been discarded along with the ash from coal fires, I had a rocking horse from the same sources and a large ‘tin bath’ also came his way and hung from a large nail on the backyard wall.

The clamour for diversity does not seem to stretch to waste disposal, at least in Rochdale. It’s a job which seems to be more of less exclusively the preserve of white men, and I’ve yet to hear a media feminist making a song and dance about it.  Selective outrage is the order of the day.

I was reminded of my dad when I heard the advice that anyone who could, should ‘work from home’.  We’d soon notice if our bins were not collected for three months, but who thinks of referring to ‘dustmen’ as essential workers?

We hear the news that the government is at last beginning to meet the desperate need for doctors and nurses to have the best possible personal protective equipment.  We are told to wash our hands frequently, to avoid buses, meeting friends and to keep at least two metres apart if we leave the house.

What we don’t hear is how people like dustmen are going to do any of these things. They will spend part of the day in a crowded cab travelling to the start of their round.  They’ll handle dozens of bins not knowing whether the person who put them out is suffering from Covid19, not yet showing symptoms, but infected and shedding virus particles or fit as a butcher’s dog, and each evening they will go home to their family.

At the very least they should be provided with adequate amounts of hand gel, a plentiful supply of wet wipes and anything else which might help to prevent them becoming infected with the virus causing Covid19.

There is one thing we can all do to reduce the risk of infection being passed to them. We can sterilise the handles of our bins after we put them out.  Wiping them over with a solution of one part bleach and twenty parts water (0.25% bleach) and allowing this to remain on the handles as long as possible will go a long way to doing this.

Just because you have no symptoms of Covid19 now does not mean that you are not incubating the disease.  You’ll miss your dustman if he does not call next week because he is ill. 

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