From another thread.
Weedsnseeds1 Sat 19-Sep-20 00:37:58
Would anyone be interested in the perspective from the food industry? Not the catering / hospitality industry (which people seem, on the whole, perfectly happy to see go bankrupt, despite no particular evidence they have increased the infection rate)?
The food manufacturing industry have been hit hard. There are currently around 50 factories / distribution centres with outbreaks. If they get 50/60/70 caees they might shut for a day or two to deep clean.
Otherwise the people with symptoms / positive tests keep going.
People are dying in the food industry. Cranswick in Barnsley had 9 cases, 3 died. 2 Sisters in Anglesey, couple of hundred cases. My job is food safety - independent inspections in factories. I am in one or two factories a week, where it is not unusual to have 20 or 30 staff off with symptoms or confirmed cases.
We have to keep going because, I am reluctantly concluding, £9 an hour Poles, Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Hungarians and the like, don't deserve the protection that certain hallowed professions do.
They can take 2 weeks off to isolate without pay if they are a contact, they can claim SSP, they can die.
There are always replacements from the temping agencies and the home workers, teachers and other revered professions can get their home deliveries, or pop into Tesco, that's the important thing.
Hey 51% of the country voted to kick the lot of them out, so why not thin the numbers out a bit now?
Not to mention warehouse pickers, delivery drivers...
Why are these people dispensable when they are providing the most basic of services to the nation?
If you ordered chicken breasts for your click and collect, but end up with chicken thighs, it's not going to kill you, but demanding to be supplied with whatever you want, whenever you want, while demanding special treatment, protection from the horrors if going to work (not including the genuinely shielding in that) is blinkered in the extreme. That really is killing people.
Apologies for the rant, but the lack of awareness of essential workers outside of tbe NHS and teachers on here is unreal. And the lack of awareness for the debt you owe to low paid immigrant or migrant workers, who have sucked up the risk and turned up day after day, in order to make sure you are fed, is breathtaking.
The feedback I get from sites is that absenteeism has been lower than normal throughout lockdown. They are in work with all the everyday illnesses outside COVID19, when they might previously have taken time off, because they have a work ethic and a sense of social responsibility to as country, that by a narrow majority, doesn't even want them there.
They can't visit their families, even by socially distancing outside an open window.
I'm not Eastern European, or other non-UK by the way. I'm just giving you my perspective on the complete lack of recognition or sympathy for this group.