Waste management workers have gone from hero to zero in the eyes of the public since pandemic research, according to British research

Dustmen and Road Sweepers have gone from the hero to zero in the eyes of the public since the end of the cocovated pandemic, according to new research.

During locking, people applauded dust men who, as a vital service in the public sector, continued to work even at risk for their health. But when the country returned to normal, the dust men said they were treated as lazy and incompetent by the public, the study revealed.

Five researchers in the United Kingdom interviewed 42 council waste collectors, road sweepers, litter pickers and Graffiti moves in London and south-east of England in 2020, between the first and second locking, and again in 2021, after the country returned to normal.

The five are: Professor Natalia Slutskaya, University of Sussex; Professor Annilee Game, University of East Anglia; Dr Rachel Morgan, Brunel University; Dr Izabela Delabre, University of Birkbeck in London; And Professor Tim Newton, University of Leicester.

In an article published in SociologyThey write: “Unlike many other professions, people involved in waste management during the pandemic were classified as essential workers and expected to continue to do their job.”

The workers informed researchers of “their sense of public duty to avoid the risks for the health of waste that accumulates”, which was particularly important given “an increase in workloads due to litter forms, such as facial masks and plastic gloves, and greater waste of increased online purchase and DIY.

“The increase in litter volume has led to the intensification of workers’ schedules, prolonged routes, longer towers and six -day work weeks. However, workers in our study continued to emphasize the importance of doing a good job, competing for their physical endurance and on the contribution of their work to the community.

“They admitted the positive feelings mentioned to be at the reception of recognition and respect, even if they felt aware and disseminated to be labeled by heroes. Public emissions from the social media base fueled support keys, because they were considered a stroke of pandemic in order to keep the country on the move.”

A litter picker told the researchers: “I felt embarrassed when they applaud, you get back as if you were a superhero, you are a celebrity. I am just a normal dust, but it was good, the country showing their appreciation.” A dust driver said: “We were respected in the street. People gave us respect as a group.”

But the researchers wrote that after the end of the locks, “our respondents reported that their daily exchanges with the public have become experiences again that treated again like dirt ” or designed as lazy and less competent.

“The pandemic has not resulted in a revision of the status order which relegates those which are waste management work at the bottom of the status of status, thanks to negative socio -cultural attributes as being lazy, unintelligent, without instruction or without ambition, skills or capacities to carry out other tasks.”

A Dustcart driver said: “In the pandemic, they applauded us, now they treat you like dirt, you get abuse, you are threatened, we had small stupid notes in the trash cans, calling us lazy bastards, we heard everything.”

Other comments made to workers by the public included: “We pay your salary and you are sitting smoking or something like that” or “garbage cleaning is basic work, you should be grateful to have a job.”

A litter picker told researchers: “The concept of all this is that, because you work for advice, you do not work hard – they see council workers as shirkers. Once stigmatization is attached to a certain work, it is very, very difficult to erase this stigmatization.”

One of them said, “I think that because the way society is nowadays, if you have a job with money, you are the elite and people admire this. They look at people like road cleaners and they think you have nothing – we are not important to them.”

The people interviewed, all the men who had worked for their advice for between five and 40 years, also complained that their conditions of employment were getting worse. One of them said: “Now employment is based on zero hours, part-time work, an extremely low salary. People who say” you are lucky to have a job “- that’s wrong.”

A litter picker said: “Nothing has changed since the pandemic. When I pay my rent, he is fundamentally close to all my salary, it is immediately disappeared.”