Hello, my name is Christopher and this is my little short film
for Anywhere but Westminster.
I am riding Deliveroo during the coronavirus in Cardiff and this is what
social distance looks like
for Deliveroo riders.
We've got all this food going out ... They are working tirelessly
to make sure that people that are vulnerable have got food.
Yeah, I think we can make a nice opening sort of montage of stuff that's coming to us.
That's good.
We would need some voice over from you.
What it needs to say is,
look, it's weird, outside it seems to be fast but yet really slow midst of this, doesn't it?
So the claps
That's true.
We've received loads and loads of brilliant footage
from Anywhere but Westminster viewers.
It's all fascinating ... compelling stuff about the state of the country,
what issues people are faced with ...
Please, keep it coming.
For some reason I bought three packs of butter, I don't know why I did that.
I still bought three packs of butter.
I have no idea why.
And I've been drawing some spots outside my block to show people what two meters is.
'You all go home, please, it's not a holiday!'
'It's a lockdown.'
The idea was that you could stand in the spots and have a chat outdoors
at the safe recommended distance.
Here is a picture of a beach which I normally go to,
to chill out.
To cheer us up, our two children have been sending us a song every day.
Singing
She's not supposed to
This crisis has changed pretty much everything.
It has definitely changed work.
Some people are working from home like me,
other people suddenly aren't working at all.
There's a lot of people who are still working, often in dangerous and difficult conditions
not necessarily the people we did that brilliant clap for the other night
but there are people out there doing their jobs, holding society together.
Work in general is in crisis.
That's what this film is about.
So, this is a bit of a day in the life of myself.
Brought the little one on the front to mess around on her electric scooter.
which we
This is my boy Kay.
He is currently enlisted to a David Williams book.
Are you bored and fed up?
Well, this is me
on the way to work.
I've not been there for a week.
I work in East Midlands airport, I dispatch aircrafts for a living.
I live in a small house in, a little coal mining town.
I'm contracted to 30 hours that's been reduced by 50%.
Come next month, God knows what's going to happen, mate.
You know, I've got two young children.
We're probably looking at 700£ coming into the family.
For a month? It will include, presumably, the housing costs and all your bills and all that, right?
Everything.
This is normally teeming with passengers.
Just empty.
Just like a ghost town.
Are you entitled to any of the government support that Rishi Sunak keeps talking about?
Yeah, good question.
I'm not 100% because one of the clauses of the furlough process was
that your hours haven't already been reduced.
I'm a union rep at work as well.
I can honestly say that I've been doing 16-18 hours a day constant on my phone
to members who are scared, you know, people wanting answers ...
You know, there's a group of reps up and down the country.
Listen, these reps are doing an absolutely amazing job.
So, it's now two in the morning.
Temperatures dropped.
I don't know what to expect really.
There's absolutely no one.
The car is still going strong, I've been dealing with that all night.
So yeah, home.
So yeah, Monday morning, just had enough, custumised the bike.
So I can keep all the Covid specimens kind of away and not in my bag on my back.
I kind of got the anxiety of leaving the house, I'm sure I'll shake it off soon,
once I start riding.
My name is Alex Marshall, I am a medical courier, I work for a company called TDO.
We are seeing more and more Covid-19 specimens coming in at the moment.
No one is about.
I can't afford to stay home so got to keep working through it.
How are you feeling at the moment?
I feel very anxious at the moment.
Anxious on two fronts.
Obviously primarily my health,
secondly, financially.
Is it worth it or ... ?
I feel proud doing the job I'm doing.
I feel that as a key worker, I'm an integral part of the chain at the moment.
We have a severe lack of protective equipment at the moment,
I feel that I am being exposed to the risk of Covid at the moment.
But I've got to get up each day, come in and earn money.
It's a bizarre kind of time to be considered integral
but still to have so little rights, so little securities.
We first met Alex last year at the HQ of his small trade union.
The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain.
Now, the IWGP is starting legal action against the government,
saying that its financial help for workers leaves people in the gig economy unprotected.
The union is also demanding better financial and physical protection
from TVL for its couriers.
You know, we're fighting the government, you know, moving heaven and earth
for so many people, yet, so many key workers are being left under
the same conditions they've already always been under
and even during a pandemic, they're still suffering the same things.
However, they're given this gloss of, 'oh you're so important', you know,
if we're so important we should be given, you know, basic things
like sick pay, full pay when we're having to self-isolate, you know?
We should be given a guarantee wage when we are getting out on the streets
to deliver things to people.
You know, we should be given regular testing.
TDL insisted that all their couriers have been offered full employment contracts
including sick pay rights.
It said it was inconceivable they would deliberately expose any of their workforce to undue risk.
They said their couriers have been provided with hand sanitisers and protective gloves but
masks are not required for the activities they carry out.
Voice message: 'We're currently handling a large number of calls and the line is still busy.'
'Have you considered going online at www.gov.uk/universalcredit'
It's been a nightmare!
I've had to ring every day for like, eight days.
'We are experiencing significantly higher calls than usual.'
So basically I'd like to apply for universal credit.
I'm not entitled to any of the help that Boris Johnson and the government have offered people
so hi ho hi ho, so off to work I go.
I've wiped my delivery bag down the best as I can,
with anti-bac wipes and I'm ready.
'We're currently experiencing high call volumes. You may prefer to call back later.'
Hi, I'm Hanna, I'm 24 and I'm a delivery driver for a company called Stuart
in Teesside, Stockton.
We've seen our work directly affected by coronavirus
due to the fact that work has just dried up completely,
a lot of the restaurants that we actually deliver for are now closing
or are already closed.
My business is a street food/catering business.
Everything started cancelling around me, every market got cancelled
and then that's when it kind of hit me, I was like, shit this is it.
I can't really pay for my rent.
Suddenly people are starting to recognise us and I appreciated that
and I do think that's vital.
I do think we should all get a pay rise.
Do you get an hourly rate?
Yeah.
Can you tell us how much that is?
For a senior role, I get £8,50 an hour.
Wow.
Our employers have told us to apply for universal credit.
A few of our riders have tried but they are number 42 thousand in the queue of people
trying to get document identification.
'The number you have dialed cannot accept this call.'
Please hang up and try again later.
I work at McDonald's, I am customer lead.
Stores have closed due to coronavirus,
we've all had to stay at home ...
I've received an email to say that we are going to get paid for two weeks but
there's no confirmation about what's gonna happen after that.
How we are going to get paid, how often we are going to get paid ...
If we are going to get paid a decent ...
I get £9,45 an hour as it is.
So it's literally not enough to live on,
live on day to day anyway.
Like, I live pay check to pay check.
I get paid every two weeks,
and I can use my money in a week and have to live off, like, £40 the next week.
For you, personally, just give me a sense of what that money drop is likely mean
week to week, day to day?
Me and my son not being able to eat, not having gas and electric,
or picking between gas and electric
but I've still got to have to warm the house because my son's got asthma
and he's triggered with the cold air ...
So I have to make sure that the house is warm for him.
Britain's best-loved family restaurant company is their motto
so be Britain's best-loved family restaurant company and look after the families you employ.
If they don't give us 100%, the only way it's gonna get better is if you get together
and fight for it.
McDonald's have just sent me an email that essentially says that all their restaurants are franchises
and so it's up to them whether they do anything on top of the 80%
of people's wages that the government scheme provides for them.
Mel is in the Baker's Union.
And they're sort of trying to get as many people on board as they can
to push for that additional help.
So many people that we've met or heard from here are doing that right now, aren't they?
They're either in a union or they're trying to form one.
There's an odd sort of tension in this moment which is that, you know,
we're all hunkered down in our houses and avoiding
other people as we walk down the street, you know, there's lots of very
individualising aspects to what's happening but at the same time you do
get the sense that in all sorts of different ways people are banding together
and one of the oldest, you know, most tried and tested ways people have got banded together
is trade unions, right?
I mean, it goes back to 200 years ago or thereabouts and suddenly in the midst of this moment,
these institutions we were told were hopelessly old-fashioned and all that,
the sort of worth and value of those things to people is being revealed yet again.
Right, I woke up this morning, I've got to run a branch of the GMN union.
We've been getting together,
and we've managed to come up with a kind of our own hardship fund.
Right, well, I've got some checks for some of the GMB members
that are suffering a massive hardship at the minute.
Pembo, what you saying? How do you think things are looking?
It's upsetting, everyday I wake up everything is going off,
where do I stand?
What do I do?
Where are we going to get money from?
How are you coping ... ?
Stressed, stressed.
You've got your nan to look after?
I mean, taking it solo, yeah?
It is, it is, stressful.
I can say she got dementia.
So, obviously I've got to cope with that 24 hours a day now.
go out.
Someone's got to do all the things as well now, so ...
It's upsetting, my head is basically a shed.
There's no work for me and taking care of my grandma as well ...
I'm upset, I really am.
I'm devastated, totally.
Alright, much love, brother. Take care, yeah?
Got to say that was emotional.
He's in bits. Bless him.
i've just come home.
My Ruby's done it, yeah.
Stay safe picture for the window.
Stay safe everybody.
The piece of music you've heard running through this film is Bells
by the Manchester based musician Phil France from his album Circle.
So even prior to the coronavirus happening, the country was in a sort of strange state,
has been for about three years ...
Am I wrong to sort of hear some of that in here as well?
I can't really do anything about the melancholy, John,
it just kind of comes out.
But what I am trying to do with the melancholy is
not stay there, you know, and trying to offer something that
gives the listener a bit of hope as well.
So, you know, I am really into music that does that
and I hope that kind of acknowledges that maybe things aren't great
but there's no reason to be totally down about it, you can still kind of
be strong, be hopeful and then, yeah, I mean, a lot of people are saying
that they're enjoy listening to my music at the moment
and I'm delighted about that.
Keep sending us your videos, keep sending us new music.
This series continues.