‘You have to take action’: One hospital cleaner’s journey through the pandemic

‘Two years ago, Ernesta decided she wanted to improve things for the cleaners at Lewisham hospital. She believed they deserved better pay and better treatment. She joined the union, persuaded her colleagues to join, too, and they began to organise themselves. In a long campaign to improve their working lives – a campaign that has persevered through a pandemic – the cleaners have won various battles, but they still have more to fight. In the past three months, their vulnerability has also been made distressingly clear. Cleaners from all over the country have died from Covid-19 – two of those who died worked down the road from Lewisham at St George’s hospital in Tooting. The pandemic has revealed what was always obvious to Ernesta: a hospital can’t function without its cleaners. They are as vital to its purpose as any of the other frontline staff, and equally at risk.’

Read here (The Guardian, June 30, 2020)