People working is important for our future

[underneaththeash]

AIBU to think that we need to keep as many people working for as long as we can, or the country is going to be an a worse financial situation for longer than we're going to be already?
In the long run that means less money for social care, schools, hospitals, benefits, infrastructure. The more money the government borrows the longer it will take to pay it all back.

Companies obviously should put in place policies that keep people safe, such as social distancing where possible and everyone should work from home where possible. But I keep reading on threads that people should all be giving up work and staying at home with their children and that isn't good advice if we want to have some semblance of an economy - we have many months of fighting this pandemic to get through and if everyone voluntarily gives up work or takes 80% of their salary from the government we're absolutely screwed.

Even in Spain and Italy, people are allowed outside to go to work.

@Cherryade8 if you can work from home you should. School is a last resort. Has to be to protect us all. The key worker list is extensive and vague and schools have to protect their staff. I’m sorry it’s difficult for you, I really am, but you say yourself your work is doable from home. I’m also a single parent (though DD is now an adult) so I get how hard it is.

It's an opportunity. Instead of trying to keep the old ways going, try to worry less ....ha ha when you are broke it's virtually impossible to escape the system as you try to get by day to day, yet it's only those people who really benefit most from change

I am just hopeful things will change in the future, we will value people not profit

DH and I run a business. Luckily our workshop area is well spaced out anyway, and the staff all work around 5m apart from each other. We've staggered tea and lunch breaks so no one is "congregating" in one area at any time, we're cleaning obsessively, and they've all more or less begged us to keep them working until we're told not to. Deliveries are being left outside, opened with gloves on, and we've taken every sensible precaution we can. Two are self isolating on full pay as they're worried.

The scaremongering and panicking around this virus is horrific. The people stockpiling in supermarkets in the last few days are the fucking idiots people who need telling to stay at home, not the rest of us taking sensible precautions. We want to have a business left in 12 weeks to carry on, thanks all the same, and it can't be run from home.

I was slaughtered for saying that I would have to stay at home with the children (front line nhs) rather than lose DH wage (agricultural structural engineer) he can’t work from home as it’s hands on and has been told to work until told otherwise or it’s unpaid. I was told I was selfish and that it’s a national emergency so shouldn’t care about our finances or how it would affect our life/our children and just knock my pan in helping others while worrying about whether we would have a home or food at the end of it. This was because I had the gall to say I would use the childcare if available, sure those same posters will be pleased to know I wasn’t eligible as it needed to be 2 key workers