IN WUHAN, devastated by the coronavirus outbreak at the beginning of this year, nightclubs are open again. We are having to enter a partial second lockdown next week because of politics as much as epidemiology. 

At the beginning of the outbreak Boris Johnson boasted about being able to profit by being more careless than other countries. The government locked down too late, and when it did, it inherited a health service shredded by cuts and privatisation. Rather than rapidly raising state capacity, it adopted the same strategy that has failed on every major public project from universal credit to railways – huge bungs for profiteers with a record of failure but close links to the Conservative Party.

Our test and trace system is now being operated by teenagers on the minimum wage in roles intended for experienced clinicians at the level of paramedics or assistant psychologists. 

Rather than learning from its mistakes over the summer, the Westminster government seems intent on repeating them and putting public safety at risk.

Of course it’s Unison members who will then pick up the pieces.

If the second partial lockdown is to bring this crisis under control, it is time to bring to the table the people on the front lines of handling the first wave. Public service workers have amassed a huge body of experience, and undergone huge risks to their lives. This time, the government needs to do more than partake in a weekly clap. It needs to put front-line voices at the heart of its strategy. 

I’ve been representing public service workers for decades. I don’t claim to know every single issue in every workplace, but I have seen and spoken to enough people who underwent the first wave to have a good idea of where to start. 

First, the test and trace scandal needs to be addressed once and for all. We need local and regional oversight of the system, and for it to be properly under NHS control, not merely borrowing the NHS brand to attract trust it has not earned.   

Secondly, we need to ensure that the care homes disaster of the first wave is not repeated, where huge numbers of care home deaths piled up while the government claimed that the health service had not been overwhelmed, simply because patients were not being admitted. The level of testing and PPE provision in care homes – and then all public-facing public service workplaces – needs to keep pace with the NHS. 

Thirdly, government needs to acknowledge that this partial lockdown is once again going to put additional pressure on public service workers and leave them as the main vector of transmission, and respond accordingly. Schools, colleges and universities remaining open in full during what purports to be a full lockdown is absurd. Worse, in many of these settings the resources and rules to ensure the maximum level of infection control are not even slightly in place.   

Fourth, the increased risk of severe illness and death to already marginalised groups; most notably ethnic minorities, women, and people from low-income backgrounds (who are concentrated in public services and hospitality) needs to be taken into account. Full risk assessments for those who may be at increased risk need to be undertaken now. 

Finally, public service workers cannot, given the experience they have, trust that things will be done well without proper scrutiny. They and their union representatives need access and the ability to scrutinise and influence high-level planning and strategy at every level, and ways in which to safely blow the whistle where lives are being unnecessarily put at risk. 

Important as I believe our public service heroes are, this is not just about them. We have seen throughout this pandemic how ignoring the needs of one group of people affects all. We have seen the failures – both moral and practical – of a system that prizes short-termism and profit over acting in the common good. If we want to stop this virus and the economic crisis that follows it from extending well into next year, we need – for the sake of the country – to ensure that the people running our critical national infrastructure are protected and valued. 

That means public service workers being organised, resourced and empowered by their unions; and it means building bigger, stronger unions. It means unions being prepared to take action, up to and including walkouts, if government refuses to take safety seriously. And it means the community spirit embodied by thousands of spontaneous mutual aid groups last spring being revived, and communities showing solidarity with their front-line workers. 

We get through this winter together, or many of us will not get through it at all. 

Roger McKenzie is Unison assistant general secretary and is standing for general secretary.