Movimento sindical europeu lança publicação sobre o tema Austeridade e pandemia O subtítulo destaca:
"How cuts damaged four vital pillars of pandemic resilience"
Uma discussão atual e importantíssima em tempos de agir contra desastres futuros .
vejam o resumo abaixo. clique o link para ver texto completo
Summary
Real terms cuts and underinvestment in public services from 2010 to 2020 undermined the UK’s ability to provide an effective and coherent response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Safe staffing levels in health and social care were damaged by multiple years of pay caps and pay freezes, which impeded recruitment and increased staff turnover. This left both health and social care dangerously understaffed when the pandemic began.
• Public service capacity was damaged by steep cuts to almost every part of the public sector. In 2020 when the pandemic hit, spending per capita was still lower than in 2010 in social care, transport, housing, childcare, schools, higher education, police, fire services, and environmental protection. This limited the ability of services to contribute to civil contingencies, and to continue essential activities effectively such children’s education.
• A strong social safety was damaged by direct cuts to social security through benefit freezes, and by reforms that reduced entitlement and narrowed eligibility to fewer people. This increased poverty levels, which was associated with greater risks of exposure and transmission, and greater levels of vulnerability to more serious health consequences from Covid illness.
• Robust health and safety enforcement was compromised by cuts that decimated public health and safety regulators, and confusion over authorities remit. During the pandemic, instead of raising the number of inspections and enforcement notices, they fell to an all-time low, despite widespread workplace linked cases of infection.
The Covid-19 Inquiry provides the UK people and our government with a vital opportunity to learn important lessons that could save lives in a future pandemic.
The summary of the lessons identified in this report is:
• Lessons for safe staffing: To be resilient and prepared for a future pandemic, staffing levels must increase. This will only happen through greater investment in our health and social care workforces. Government should:
- . Work with TUC and unions in the public sector to develop fully funded, long-term workforce strategies in health, social care, and other parts of the public sector. This should include restoration of the lost value of pay since 2010.
- Work in social partnership and dialogue with unions and employers, using appropriate forums where they exist, such as the social partnership forum in the NHS, and creating them where they do not, such as for social care in England.
- Fix the recruitment and retention crisis in social care, banning zero hours contracts and delivering a new £15 sectoral minimum wage.
- Increase the attention given to social care services in contingency planning exercises, so that the social care workforce role, and requirements such as staffing levels, are better understood before a future pandemic.
- Lessons for public service capacity: The Covid-19 pandemic proved to be a long-lasting cross-cutting emergency. Our public services need to be more resilient and prepared for this kind of crisis next time.
- Strong and resilient public services require sustainable, long-term funding, including significant capital investment to ensure we have capacity, resources and buildings fit for purpose.
- Outsourcing has weakened public services. Our services should be brought back in-house with sufficient funding to ensure the decent working conditions necessary to deliver high-quality services.
- The role of local government and its skilled workforce in building strong and healthy communities should be better valued.
- Lessons for a strong safety net:
- By increasing deprivation, social security cuts exposed low-income households to greater risk of infection and mortality. Social security support should be improved to better protect households from entering situations that increase exposure, transmission, vulnerability, and susceptibility.
- Some unequal impacts of the pandemic on women, Black and minority ethnic groups, households with children, and households with disabled people are related to the unequal impacts of social security cuts on these groups. Greater support through social security is therefore a vital part of reducing inequality impacts in future pandemics.
- Social security cuts undermined the ability of recipients to protect their wellbeing and continue with other important aspects of their lives. This included harm to children’s wellbeing and educational progress. Future pandemic preparedness must consider the importance of social security to these wider wellbeing needs in periods of restrictions such as lockdowns.
- Social security has long been understood as an important income stabiliser in an economic crisis. We must now learn the lesson that it is an important income stabiliser in a pandemic too. Its basic design must be sufficiently responsive, and there must be an effective means of providing additional emergency support including the type of permanent job retention scheme that many other countries have.
- Lessons for robust health and safety: To be resilient and prepared for a future pandemic, Britain’s health and safety regulators need reinvestment and rebuilding. Otherwise working people’s health and safety will be left at unacceptable risk, and workplaces could be centres of transmission affecting the wider community.
- Long-term, adequate funding of health and safety regulators is required if we are to uphold health and safety laws, and to ensure employers who put working people and the public at risk face the necessary consequences.
- Health and safety inspectors in HSE and local authorities must have adequate capacity to carry out their roles, with the necessary independence to pursue employers with relevant enforcement measures. This must include a recruitment drive where capacity concerns are identified owing to an aging workforce or a long-term freeze in recruitment.
- A realignment of health and safety regulation is needed to ensure independence, and to guarantee enforcement activities are in line with public and stakeholder expectations.
- Regulatory clarity: a clear remit for which agencies are responsible for which types of workplaces, with a greater level of awareness among employers, the public and stakeholders.
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