What’s a “Key Worker ” anyway ?
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What’s a “Key Worker” anyway? LINDA AITCHISON and RACHAEL ROWE discuss the meaning of the term “Key Worker”. Back in March 2020, Birmingham cleaning boss Bev Redguard was one of many calling for designated “Key Worker” status. Bev was regularly donning protective clothing to join a 40-strong workforce to fight the spread of Covid-19 in schools where the children of Key Workers were still being taught. When cabinet minister Michael Gove expressed his thanks to cleaners and others in public services, Bev said that it was a welcome gesture but without further measures to back it up, the gesture amounted to empty words. As we show in our “Key Worker timeline” below, the term hasn’t always meant someone whose job helps society keep running. That’s why the term has been broadened in recent years … and why Bev, along with legions of cleaners across the UK felt so strongly that it should also apply to them. Cleaners never did get the official Key Worker status they deserved. But, as Rachael reports below, cleaning suppliers did. Delia Cannings, Chair of the British Cleaning Council (BCC), said:
"Most cleaning and hygiene staff were not recognised as being Key Workers throughout the pandemic. For example, suppliers of vital hospital
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Contributor Rachael Rowe
cleaning equipment were classified as Key Workers, but cleaning operatives who were going to use that equipment were not.” "The recommendations of an allparty parliamentary group report around cleaning staff receiving Key Worker status in any future pandemic have not been agreed or accepted by the government … nor have any of the report's recommendations, for that matter. "The BCC continues to call for the government to recognise the crucial, frontline role cleaning staff have in keeping the public healthy, safe and well and for it to agree that, in the event of a future pandemic, Key Worker status will
be bestowed upon commercial cleaning and hygiene operatives working in defined key venues and also upon personnel in the cleaning products production and supply sectors." Three years on from the first announcement of Key Worker categories, are some other vital roles still missing from this much-used umbrella description? Helen Neale from Kiddy Charts, an organisation which provides free educational resources for the children of Key Workers (click here for the Kiddy Charts homepage), says: “There are more professions who ought to be included, such as therapists, because not having your therapist can also have a significant impact on people. Volunteer
WWW.KEYWORKERNATION.ORG.UK