Happy Father’s Day
21st June 2020AgriculturalCommercial buildingsIndustrialsteelWarehouses
With over 88% of the workforce being male, Delphi Steel wanted to wish all the fathers involved in construction a very Happy Father’s Day! There are over 2 million construction workers in the UK working long hours, early mornings, late nights, and weekends. Heavy lifting, health and safety risks, deadlines, hot weather, cold weather, rain, wind, and snow means construction work is not for the faint-hearted.
Now that restrictions are being slowly lifted and construction work gets underway again, it’s back to work for many. Given the nature of the work, many fathers in construction have to spend long periods away from their families. So from Delphi Steel to all the fathers in construction, we wish a very Happy Father’s Day.
A little Father’s Day history…
Unlike mothering Sunday, which is a traditional Christian holiday, father’s day began in 1908 following a mining accident that killed 362 men in West Virginia, USA. The local church held a special sermon honouring the fathers that had been lost.
Following this, an American woman named Sonora Smart Dodd made it her mission to set up a national father’s day. She was raised along with her 5 siblings by her father following the death of her mother during childbirth.
The idea began to spread slowly across the USA but it wasn’t until World War 2 when advertisers saw the opportunity of using Father’s Day to promote the troops out on the field. By the end of the war, father’s day was a national institution.
Finally in 1972, Richard Nixon declared Father’s Day a national holiday. Of course by this time it had already spread to the UK and is a day we all know well.
The message from Boris Johnson to ‘Stay Alert’ caused quite a stir. Immediately Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales said they are not following suit and sticking to their ‘Stay At Home’ message. For the construction industry this causes problems for suppliers and contractors who have customers outside their own UK country. Unlike the rest of the UK, England has allowed ‘non-essential’ sites to re-open while others only allowing this for essential work (i.e. sites involved in projects that support the fight against Covid-19). More information 
With nearly 2,000 people testing positive for coronavirus in the UK and the number of people who have died at 71, Coronavirus has swiftly become a severe epidemic and the effects are reaching into all areas of our lives. The construction industry is no exception where often large numbers of people with differing skills and expertise come together to get a job done. The implications of locking down construction sites are of course extremely costly to businesses and their staff and requires careful consideration. Measures including social distancing and strict worker hygiene protocols are hoped to delay the need for such closures and keep the industry running for as long as is feasible. 
