Companies are forcing hospitality workers to wear masks while their clients wear no PPE. Our safety should matter
“I mean chill out, we don’t have coronavirus.”
This was the response I received from a party guest when I light-heartedly pointed out that social distancing seemed to have gone out the window after a couple of drinks. If only we could all self-diagnose as easily as this.
As bars and restaurants reopen, it has become clear to me (as someone who works part-time in hospitality) that front of house staff are being put at risk by indifferent customers and employers. Recently, it happened to me.
Facing the impressive facade of the renovated building where I was to complete my shift, I walked through the grand entrance, past a sanitiser station, up the stairs, past another sanitiser station, and greeted colleagues whom I hadn’t seen in four months. It was at this point that I was given a face mask, branded with the company’s logo by the venue manager.
I had been voluntarily "unfurloughed" to help out with an "open day" for media and contractors to see the exciting new venue. After thorough online training in safe return-to-work practices, and with the prospect of topping up the 80 per cent of my usual wage which I had been fortunate to receive thus far, I jumped at the opportunity to get back behind the bar.
The manager’s briefing was all well and good: the guests’ arrival times had been staggered, to avoid a rush and to help encourage everyone to keep a safe distance. There were stations with hand sanitiser throughout the building and goody bags with more branded masks at the entrance. There would be no bar service, so we should wait on guests at their tables. Oh, and there would be a free bar until midnight.
Arrival times were staggered, but there were no leaving times. So by 8pm, when the 50 or so guests had all arrived, they couldn’t have kept a safe distance from each other even if they had wanted to. But a few rounds in and the entire building had become a sort of private lockdown party, with only a small handful of guests even attempting to stay one metre apart from others. Sanitiser was only used by the staff, and the goody bags with masks remained in the entrance hall.
The most blatant offenders were the company CEO and executive chairman, who made the effort (as any good business person would) to have a drink with the partners and contractors whose loyalty over the past months would have been invaluable in keeping the company afloat.
But the idea that my colleagues and I had volunteered to come off furlough to help with an "open day" which turned into a piss-up for executives and shareholders was disturbing, to say the least. It seemed that those in charge had considered that most of their guests wouldn’t be concerned about "sticking to the rules". Judging by the remark of my customer, they guessed correctly. But they clearly hadn’t considered that we as staff might have been uncomfortable with the increased risk we now faced.
It was sickeningly ironic that we had been given a mass of online training and branded face masks so we could protect our guests, and yet our guests (who just so happened to be our employers) were doing nothing to protect us.
This exposes a dynamic that employees in the hospitality sector will not be unfamiliar with. Exploitative, "casual" contracts that are based on the “understanding that the Company makes no promise or guarantee of a minimum level of work” are commonplace. Despite strict health and safety regulations, they are regularly bypassed and workers are rarely held to legal standards by their managers.
My experience simply highlights the reality that many of us in the hospitality sector have to face on a regular basis. Fear of losing out on work makes employees reticent to speak out about practices that they feel are unfair or unsafe. With Hospitality UK’s announcement last week that 75 per cent of hospitality businesses risk insolvency within the year, staff are even more likely to keep quiet and deal with unsafe and exploitative scenarios like this.
Even for those of us who are lucky enough not to lose our jobs, government support in the form of furlough and "Eat Out to Help Out" schemes will only act as a temporary lifeline. With the prospect of a second wave, thousands of employees face the possibility of having to go to work in unsafe environments as the government keeps businesses open in a vain attempt to administer life-support to a failing economy.
The snobbery of executives putting their staff at risk in order to brown-nose their partners and shareholders is depressingly predictable. We are constantly told that we are the "face of the company" and "the most important part of the team". This is, of course, blatant hypocrisy. The people with the money always have, and always will be, the most important, unless there is a fundamental difference in the way our society functions. The pandemic has simply shed new light on these inequalities and why things must change.
The real economic fallout from the pandemic is yet to happen. When it does, it won’t be the shareholders and executives who face the most serious consequences. It will be the bottom-tier staff who will have to put up with reduced hours, dangerous conditions and, when push comes to shove, will be the first to lose their jobs.
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