My wife is a research assistant at a large university. She currently tests blood samples that contain HIV, and, in the near future, blood samples with COVID-19. There are multiple UV lamps throughout the lab used to disinfect the areas. One of the lamps recently broke, and they’re now being told it’s not worth replacing. We are unable to comprehend this decision. My initial thought was we might have another HCQ situation where these leftist intellectuals are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Something that has proven to be effective is minimized just so Trump can’t receive credit. At worst, this decision is nefarious and puts my wife’s (and her coworkers’) health at risk. Like Mugatu, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
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Take the union approach and have the full staff demand the lamp be replaced. Use their weapons against them (and work hard to not be corrupted by those tools).
I think everything relating to health industry is 100% focused on this shit as a cash cow to the point of going pear shaped. Replacing what should be regarded as critical operational equipment is a loss and management is having "don't have time to deal with that shit because there's going to be 99999999999999999 cases to examine so better keep going!" mentality.
If I was in her shoes, I'd be trying to keep documentation about every bullshit thing going on, maybe file a something formal about how the work environment is not safe. If it's bad enough and depending on your state, you'd probably be and to collect UC given the circumstances.
Trying to go another route with union might be an option as well, but every single time I've heard anyone dealing with unions, they never go anywhere.
UV lamps are cheap. UV LEDs are even cheaper. Neither have complex components. I can imagine the companies that sell them to labs have a pretty steep markup, but once you open the box, the components inside are most likely off the shelf.
I buy and sell used lab equipment and on a recent purchase, the expensive vacuum pump on a vacuum dryer was the cheapest HVAC vacuum pump with a cheap filter poorly attached to the exhaust. There weren't even instructions to change the vacuum oil or to treat the oil like biological waste.
Someone is making a shit ton of money off this stuff right now. Think about it: huge federal dollars for "the pandemic," but healthcare workers are being laid off and having hours cut for lack of patients. Where is all the money going? That lamp world reduce the amount of money they're stealing. Good luck.