At present neither my partner nor I are working. I was wfh but my contract finished at the end of May. My partner was working as a labourer until this all hit. We live with his 90 year old mother, who would clearly be vulnerable and who we act as carers for, so he left his job just before lockdown started. The rest of his team continued working.
We have savings and do not have huge outgoings such as rent, so we are in the fortunate position of being able to sit things out for a while. But not forever. I have started sending my CV out but obviously there is not much out there at present. My partner could however in theory return. His boss would still take him, although I have no idea how long this possibility would remain open for. He also knows other people around who would probably provide him with work in the future.
My fear is that there is unlikely to be any real social distancing or precautions taken in this kind of work environment. I suspect it would just not be taken seriously. And I also suspect my partner, once there, would just follow suit with the rest of them. He already struggles with the concept of social distancing when we go for walks. He is probably somewhat on the spectrum and doesn't seem to quite get risk management so this would add to it. I sometimes have to remind him to stay far enough away from people, and a couple of times he has stopped to chat to some one he knows and while he has kept a reasonable distance he has implied to them he is only doing it because I am there. I walked past the site yesterday where he would be working and I could see three men very close together on one rung of scaffolding.
We have kind of agreed to sit this out for a while since we can get by for now to see what happens over the coming months, whether there is a second wave and what progress is made in terms of vaccines and treatments. And as I said we have to think about the risk to his mother. At least one of us needs to live with her and there is no way he would move out and not be around her.
But realistically he can't just not work again forever, even if I find something where I can wfh. We can hope some miraculous development might be here within months, but the likelihood is it won't I guess. But I fear as soon as he goes back there will be a significant chance of him catching it mainly because necessary precautions just will not be taken, either by his workmates or him. Then we will all be at risk. I just basically feel that we are delaying the inevitable. That we are sitting here pretty much safe now, but at some point my partner will have to return to work and then every day will just be spent worrying about when we will all be struck down with it. I'm just terrified about this future, but also angry because I know it could be mainly avoidable if the necessary precautions were taken, but for some reason he is not the type of person to fully take them on board.