Ms Nora Labo:

Yes. I have done it a lot but the employers should have been supportive of their own staff and should have at least instructed people in how to find these forms. For instance, a lot of the forms for the Covid-19 illness benefit were not available online for most of March when we had some early clusters. Many people did not have GPs as they did not have a PPS number. This was because they had been scammed by their employment agency. These workers were in a very difficult situation and the agencies and the hirers, by which I mean the factory owners, did not help their staff in any way. They just sent them home to self-isolate without supplies. These workers were desperate and it is only because they were unionised that we could help them. We do not know if other non-unionised workers went through a whole ordeal without accessing any payments.

There were also very long delays in accessing these payments. As the workers do not speak English, they found it hard to contact the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection to see how their application was going. For instance, we had a case of six workers who only in July received payment for the two weeks in March during which they self-isolated.