Orville Taylor | Essential workers in the pandemic

If you have never watched your child, mother or any other relative gasp for air, with the atomiser not seeming to work, then you will never truly appreciate what a lower respiratory infection is. Outside of COVID-19, hundreds of Jamaicans die from pneumonia, bronchitis, and there is still the occasional sufferer from diseases which look like tuberculosis. Asthmatics know that their lungs are no organs to play with, because even a common cold, caused by one of the older coronaviruses, could mean lights out.

Vaccines are here and there is a major debate about them. Indeed, there is one which, in the strictest sense of the word, is not actually a vaccine but some form of new technology. What seems to be the consensus among our medical experts is that they work better than if one takes nothing at all, and the risks are outweighed by the benefits.

With more than 34,000 cases and more than 600 deaths and less space in hospitals than in naysayers’ arguments, the need for a national consensus is greater than at any other time in our modern history. Never mind the dramatics last week in Parliament, I totally agree with Leader of the Opposition Mark Golding, in his call for the resumption of Vale Royal Talks. They do not have to be as they used to be, but the processes of deep consultation and agreement on the fundamentals is paramount.

There is agreement regarding the need to prioritise the distribution of the vaccine, and in a country where a significant portion of the population is more than 60 years of age and with high levels of comorbidities, this must be settled. Yet, there seems to be creeping in the debate some degree of dissensus. Given that 30 per cent of the population indicated an unwillingness to take the needle, the Government has to find means to convince the citizens, beyond the $10,000 given to the elderly who have no other income.

SETTLE PRIORITY LIST

Of course, there is no dispute regarding former prime ministers P.J. Patterson and Bruce Golding being inoculated, because they are senior citizens. However, we need to settle the priority list once and for all. At the beginning of the pandemic, we threw around the expressions ‘essential services’ and ‘essential workers’. The latter is actually easier because it is a management decision. What it means is that those are the categories of workers, without whose presence at the workplace work would come to a halt. It does not have to be an enterprise that is critical to the economy. For example, the bartender is critical to the running of a bar; but the bar does not provide a service that we cannot do without. Well, some may disagree.

Coming out of the collective wisdom of the International Labour Organization (ILO), comprising around 200 countries and at least twice that number of trade unions and employers’ associations, there is a binding standard as to what constitutes ‘essential services’. The list will surprise you. Under our Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act (LRIDA) 1975, First Schedule (sections 2 and 28), the following fall into the classification: “water services, electricity services, health services, hospital services, sanitary services, firefighting services, correctional services, [and] overseas telecommunication services”.

Add to those docks and their associated activities, transport, petroleum, civil aviation and air transport. Key industries such as banking, bauxite, banana, sugar, tourism and, of course, the good old rum. The list is long.

DEFINING ESSENTIAL SERVICES

However, the ILO is clear. Essential services are those “the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population”. The rule of thumb is “the existence of a clear and imminent threat to the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population”. Dismissing, to my personal chagrin, radio and television, petroleum, ports, banking, tax administration, tourism and a slew of others; its narrow list is health, electricity, water, telephone, police and the armed forces, firefighting, correctional services, and “the provision of food to pupils of school age and the cleaning of schools and air traffic control”.

So, here is the simple question: if we have limited numbers of vaccines, what is the likely consequence if essential workers get very ill and die? We have had nurses and doctors dying. But what happens to the rest of society if in the middle of a COVID-19 and murder pandemic, the houses of Babylon and Soljie lose large numbers of their already small contingents?

True, there are vulnerable populations, but if you have one dose and it is to either give to a sick baby or a sick nurse, what is your choice? On an aircraft, the instruction is that you put on your own life jacket and oxygen, so that you can save the weak and infants later.

Indeed, it is a difficult choice, and we need to talk and agree.

- Dr Orville Taylor is head of the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.