Office Cleaners, Cassa Pancho, Jackie Kay

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.1 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The UK cleaning sector is worth almost £50bn a year to the country’s economy. It employs more than 900,000 people, mostly women. Right now, many are vulnerable. Some feel they won't be able to stop working if they fall ill or have to self- isolate because they can't afford it. Jenni speaks to Katy, a cleaner. Also Maria Gonzalez who's an employment barrister and Janet Macleod who's a Unite representative

Cassa Pancho set up Ballet Black twenty years ago. It's a professional ballet company for Black and Asian dancers, and from the start its aim was to make the dance world more diverse. As well as Cassa, we also talk to Cira Robinson who performed with Stormzy at last year's Glastonbury. Tonight Ballet Black is part of a new BBC TV series called Danceworks.

Jackie Kay, the National Poet for Scotland, also known as Makar, discusses her new online poetry and music festival. It's called Makar to Makar and streams via the National Theatre of Scotland's YouTube channel. We also hear from Gerda Stevenson who's a writer, actor, director and singer and is on Jackie's show, plus the singer Claire Brown, who performs a beautiful, traditional Scottish song live.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts Hello, Jenny Murray, welcoming you to the
0:07.5	Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 27th of May. Good morning. In today's program,
0:14.6	we've a tour around the arts in lockdown. Tonight's dance works on BBC 4 Features, Ballet
0:20.6	Black, formed for dancers of black and Asian descent. Why did Casapancho set up the company
0:27.6	20 years ago? And what does it mean to the dancers who work under her direction? A new novel
0:34.0	from the prolific Jenny Colgan, 500 miles from you, brings together two nurses, Cormac
0:39.8	from the Scottish Highlands and Lissa from London. And Macca to Macca, Jackie K, Scotland's
0:47.2	Macca, the National Poet, and her weekly online festival of poetry and music together with
0:53.9	two of her guests, the poet Gettys Stevenson and the singer Claire Brown.
0:59.3	Now, the UK's cleaning sector is worth almost £50 billion a year to the economy and employees,
1:07.2	more than 900,000 people. But some of those workers are among the most vulnerable in the
1:12.9	current crisis. Commercial cleaners are generally low paid, they work part-time or they're on
1:19.0	casual zero hours contracts. They can't do their jobs from home and may face exposure
1:26.2	to the virus if they are at work. Some have been told they won't be able to take paid
1:31.1	time off if they fall ill or have to isolate themselves. Well, early this morning I spoke
1:36.7	to Katie who's been working as a cleaner for 17 years. What does her job involve?
1:42.8	I'm working as a cleaner for many years and right now I'm the janitor of the date.
1:50.2	What does that mean? What do you have to do?
1:53.2	I need to just from planets toilet paper, hand towel walls. The towels for the showers
2:02.1	pick up the dirty towels, upon the new towels. And so the radio is on the accident happening
2:10.1	in the buildings that call me for clean or everything what happened during the date.
2:17.2	How protected are you from the virus? Do you have personal protective equipment?
	...

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