A Lockdown Sceptics reader has written to tell us about mandatory testing that’s happening at his workplace.
Regarding the story on Durham University today and lateral flow tests, you’ll probably be aware that there’s a growing problem of mandatory testing in workplaces.
I work in an office in London and we were told this week that twice-weekly tests are mandatory to come into the office. We currently have about 10 people coming in out of a possible 200+.
To make it worse, we were originally told these tests were advisory, but now apparently they are mandatory – something to do with the firm’s “duty of care to those with hidden underlying health conditions”. The people being tested are the same people who’ve been vaccinated of course, which shows the senselessness of the whole thing. And arguably makes the testing permanent, given that having been vaccinated doesn’t absolve you of the need to get tested twice a week.
People who hadn’t taken the test this week were sent home halfway through the day, despite having reasonable objections, including having recently had the virus (and so having the antibodies that meant they could neither catch it nor pass it on), and others not being prepared to risk having to self-isolate, given individual circumstances that make that impossible. Of course, companies can do as they please – but this is all so self-defeating and driven by all the wrong instincts.
Those of us grateful to still have a job and income have to pick and choose our battles. But why is there not more of an outcry over mandatory testing? Will mandatory vaccinations be next? You could make a case for all this (I personally wouldn’t) in a care home, but not in a normal office. Many people will say it’s the price we have to pay for getting back to normal, but it’s a high price.
My own circumstances are even worse but probably not unique. I refuse to comply with any of this because my partner had a miscarriage a few months ago, caused, we believe, by having to carry something heavy in her workplace which colleagues wouldn’t help with “due to the social distancing rules”. This is the true hidden horrific cost of lockdown and the other measures. She was then made to suffer alone in hospital on multiple occasions (family not allowed in), and even the paramedics were reluctant to come to the house – for a critical emergency – without ascertaining her Covid status. The cruelty of lockdown and the restrictions is my biggest bugbear, quite aside from its efficacy.
If other readers have stories about mandatory testing in their workplace, do email them to us here (saying whether you’re happy for us to publish your name).
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Soon to be replaced by workers in other countries. If it can be done remotely, you don’t need a British passport for it.
This has been repeatedly raised, yet so many are ignoring it.
Or algorithms running on a server somewhere.
Even if not replaced abroad there’s plenty of cheaper UK locations than anywhere HSBC is currently based where people will be happy to take on these roles remotely.
Call centres are not renowned for length of service awards. With just natural wastage all those 1,200 jobs could be located overseas in less than five years.
I wonder how many will extract a commercial rate for premises and facilities. Or will there be yet another weak roll-over – to capital and its predations, whilst unions just ‘Tut’?
They’re laughing all the way to the bank. £300 a year to turn a room in your house into an office? How much does that extra room cost per year?
They will all be happy to do it, until they are told their pay is being frozen. When are the councils going to start claiming business rates from these people? If your home is a place of ‘work’ then the rates should be applied. Have the H&S visited all the home ‘offices’ to ensure they are ‘Covid Secure’? An injury at home when working is the responsibility of the employer!
Not only is the home COVID secure there will be insurance implications for both the homeowner and company.
There are also GDPR and other privacy concerns with people working from home, many not on a VPN, with other adults able to look over shoulders at screens and access clients personal information.
And the next step, of course, is to gradually offshore these jobs!
I’ve been involved in the outsourcing of accounts functions to India. Each one has been a disaster because management have failed to calculate how much efficiency is added through communication with people you are sat next to. In one case they brought the entire function back into the UK, and in the other two a small team was created in the UK to carry the teams in India.
However, if you get the employees in the UK to prove it can work, make them work remotely, and work out how those inefficiencies can be overcome, then …
Waiting for colleagues to get around to responding on whatever chat app they’re currently ignoring is a total nightmare vs a quick chat over the top of the desk.
I’m anti-social at the best of times but there’s no way I’d choose to work from home 100% of the time.
HSBC UK the next bank to go under. Customer Service is overlooked until its too late, there is seldom any going back. Bloody fools.
Customer service is so 20th Century and bloody fools they certainly are.
I’m pretty sure there are insurance/liability issues to working from home 100% of the time. The reason I know this is a former employer restricted our wfh for this reason.
A friend of mine who works for a large, solid multinational was concerned last summer that the next step after the home office would be an even more intense shift of these home offices to countries in the 3rd world.
This week, they got news of a major restructuring in that direction and British redundancies to come because of that.
Next step: Britain becomes the third world
When I worked for a big multinational company about ten years ago we were all offered the opportunity to become home workers if we wanted to – with laptops and mobile phones it made it much easier to do so – anyway, all you had to do was apply to work from home and that was that – you got lots of help setting up your ‘work station’ at home etc and quite a lot of people leapt at the opportunity to work from home and not have to come into the office anymore except for the odd important meeting which wasn’t very often or if they preferred they could just join-in via a conferernce call and number provided. I was tempted to work from home myself but held back for a little while to see how others found the experience – I’m glad I did really because the initial novelty of home working quickly wore off for many homeworkers who were steadily starting to regret their decision – among many things they would complain about was for example feeling they were being ‘left out of the loop’ etc when important decisions were made and they didn’t get to hear about or were the last to know, they found trouble getting assistance when they were struggling with their work, they complained of feeling isolated and had no one to talk to about their work related problems and complained that their ability to contact someone quickly about an urgent problem could be lengthy and troublesome – when they worked in the office they could usually discuss their work issues almost immediately face-to-face with someone who could usually help there and then and the problem could be resolved almost immediately rather than it taking hours, days or sometimes even weeks to resolve where homeworking was concerned … but most of all many homeworkers say that they missed the office comradery … that cohesiveness that made them feel connected with the rest of the workforce which you just cannot form working home alone.
Things may have changed today but evidently I decided back then not to work from home.
I decided that it was much healthier to (try at least) keep work and homelife as seperate as possible.
All part of the reset to benefit giant corporations