A worker at a residential construction site in Co Meath told TheJournal.ie that the site he’s on briefly halted work when it was visited by gardaí after local people had expressed concern. –The Journal.ie yesterday
Residential construction sites are busy. Big Tech builds too. And the numbers presented in Journal.ie’s article above suggest that now around 23,000 more builders are on sites than in May, even though our COVID numbers are over twice as high.
Why?
FF/FG/Green government created a dozen exceptions for building business bosses this time. So building bosses use these new exceptions to funnel more workers on site. Workers in mixed public-private residential builds can not be easily observed working on one site or another.
There were 2598 new cases yesterday. Where are people interacting for long-enough in close quarters to enable this kind of increase? At ‘essential’ work sites. Ask your FF/FG/Green reps, is the Intel build or an Amazon data site an essential for our health?
Decision makers on Zoom – Builders on sites – Numbers on the up
Minister Darragh O’Brien (FF) magicked this ‘compromise with COVID’ position for builders on all of us -despite NPHET advice to serve building business bosses. It’s not in the national interest. It is not in the interest of builders’s health or their families. There is no ‘compromise with COVID’.
Decision makers are ‘preparing to make sacrifices’ in safe isolated meetings. Meanwhile workers who raise the alarm are threatened.
We need real workers’ unions to stand with workers and stand down bad sites. Real workers unions must be on the side of worker health and the benefit of the whole society.
Again, there were 2598 new cases yesterday. 50 deaths yesterday. Cop on. The Zero-COVID strategy needs to be enacted now.