"We are all in this together" we are repeatedly told. It is true that the COVID 19 virus doesn't discriminate on the basis of nationality, race, gender, or class. In the early stages it seemed that relatively wealthy business travellers, international tourists, and cruise ship passengers were more likely to be infected than those who lacked the means to travel. Snow Birds, returning from their southern winter homes, tourists and business travellers were the primary carriers responsible for the rapid global spread of the virus. A slow and sometimes reluctant response, further exacerbated by a lack of PPE, undermined efforts by countries to trace, isolate and quarantine all likely carriers in order to prevent community spread of the virus. Healthcare systems were quickly overwhelmed, unable to cope with the large numbers of critically ill COVID 19 patients. Most governments responded with lock-downs, shutting down all but the most essential businesses and confining people to their homes in an effort to curtail the rapid spread of the virus --in an effort to flatten the curve. Economies ground to a halt. Countries with enough credit to do so, Canada included, introduced multi-billion dollar quantitative easing programs to sustain industries, businesses, and newly unemployed individuals during lock-downs.
But, although the virus itself didn't discriminate on the basis of class, the measures to control the spread certainly did! Most countries unable to finance quantitative easing, implemented and enforced lock-downs nonetheless, resulting in a dual crisis --the novel corona virus and a food security crisis for the majority of their citizens no longer able to buy food because they were prevented from going to work during the lock-downs.
Even in wealthier countries it quickly became apparent that the virus was spreading far more quickly among the most vulnerable sectors of the population --the aged, the homeless, those in long-term care facilities, those living in overcrowded substandard housing, foreign workers on farms or in the meat-packing plants. Low-income front-line workers in grocery stores, public transit, healthcare professionals and support staff, personal support workers (often forced to work at two or three part-time jobs in different long-term care facilities and/or private homes to earn a living wage) were all far more exposed and vulnerable than those able to social distance and safely work from home. While the virus itself didn't discriminate on the basis of class, wealthier individuals were certainly far more able to socially distance themselves from the high risks of exposure to which much of the workforce employed in the essential service sector were subjected. Consequently the latter was far more frequently infected.
But while more privileged citizens are better able to limit their exposure to the virus, they are nevertheless not immune to the economic impact of the virus. Much of the economic impact is due to a sharp decrease in global demand for the goods and services produced by formerly lucrative sectors of the economy in the pre-COVID 19 world; sectors like tourism, fossil fuel production, hospitality, air-travel, food services, etc. Even extractive industries, livestock producers, etc. have suddenly found themselves without buyers, while fabricating industries suffered interruptions in overseas supply lines. Governments portray this decline in demand as something temporary, attributing it to the lock-downs. They insist that once lock-downs are lifted, and people are free to resume their former activities, they will once again flock to restaurants, travel to tourist destinations, book flights, burn fossil fuels, etc., and the economy will rebound. Our leaders seem inclined to see their task as building a bridge, an overpass of sorts, that will allow us to transcend this pandemic until it passes and things return to the way they were before, ostensibly complete with all its gross inequities, disregard for vulnerable populations, and climate crisis.
Here in Canada, as elsewhere, governments are now easing lock-downs. Despite low levels of testing, and the relatively recent discovery that screening people based on symptoms may miss 50% or more of contagious asymptomatic carriers, governments are confident that they can shut things down quickly enough to avoid a second wave that would once again overwhelms the healthcare system and further decimate the economy. While many business owners, alarmed by the prospect of losing their investments are eager to reopen, many of their workers are far less confident that the safety measures in place will adequately protect them. They don't want to be the expendable canaries in the coal mine, and may need a lot of persuading. Here in Canada PM Trudeau recently unveiled his plan for such persuasion.
By disqualifying people who prefer getting EI
benefits or $2,000/month CERB benefits to returning to their
high-risk service-sector minimum-wage jobs, they will be left with no choice but to return to work. People who somehow miraculously manage to pay their rent
and buy groceries with a mere $2,000/month may be unwillingly to return to work and unnecessarily expose themselves and
their families to higher risks of COVID 19 infections. Especially if their pay-cheques wouldn't amount to much more, or in come cases even less, than what they are receiving under EI or CERB benefits. Such workers must,
therefore, be subjected to the same harsh options as poor people living
in poor countries --the option of staying at
home and watching their families slowly starve to death; or assume the risk
of going out to work in the hopes that they won't take home and pass on
the virus to family members and loved ones. In most cases it is highly
unlikely that any Canadian who can both buy groceries and pay rent with a mere $2,000/month can afford accommodations that allow for much social
distancing anyway. It may seem unjust, but in most cases their risk of exposure in the workplace can't be that much worse than futile attempts at social distancing in cramped, often substandard and overcrowded housing --the only standard of housing that a total income of $2,000/month will afford them.
Sure, it may be a misnomer to refer to most
service sector jobs as essential. Imported goods and clothes from far away places, hair styling, manicures, restaurant meals and coffees are things most fellow Canadians. even those from the relatively privileged work-from-home
crowd, can live without. But those unaccustomed to their newly acquired work-from-home duties, what with doing their own childcare, home-schooling and
all, really miss the contributions of the service sector. They don't have time to prepare their own food, and despite everything must still appear competent, presentable and in control during their work-related Zoom calls. In addition to ordering skip-the-dishes
take-out food, some may even want to venture out once in a while! After all
the slight risk of being exposed to one vetted waitress/waiter/hair-stylist/store
clerk or whatever in a well PPE equipped facility is almost negligible when compared to the risks assumed
by the service providers themselves who are exposed to dozens of customers every
day! A little relaxation of social distancing rules is okay if one is
careful not to unnecessarily mingle socially with the service-sector class. A visit to the hair stylist should be a brief sortie, not unlike a fleeting encounter with the native chambermaid who changes your bed sheets in a tropical island resort.
In any case, even those services provided by service sector workers that are more appropriately described as desirable rather than essential, in a country were 70% of the workforce is employed in the service sector, even non-essential service sector jobs are essential to restarting of the economy! Flattening the curve was never about eliminating the
risk; it was about reducing the spread to a numbers that our healthcare
system can cope with. It just so happens that it is easier to reduce the
risk for the work-from-home crowd than for service sector
workers. But we are all in this together! The economic futures of both service sector workers and the
work-from-home crowd are at stake!
So, since we cannot reduce the level of risk for service sector workers to that of the work-from-home crowd, we must at least put in safety measures to mitigate that risk. Service sector workers reticent to return to work need to be convinced that with new safety measures in place continuing to provide them with EI and CERB benefits can no longer be justified. However, there is one remaining impediment preventing may service sector workers from going back to work: the lack of childcare. For that reason, regardless of risk, daycare services and schools must also be reopened.
It is totally unrealistic to expect children –especially very young
children-- to adhere to the rules of social distancing. Children want and need to touch each other or the physical reassurance and/or help from their care-givers and teachers. While the majority of children infected with COVID 19 will not get very sick --some will remain completely asymptomatic, they can and some will nevertheless become carriers and spread the virus to more vulnerable people they come in contact with --their teachers and childcare providers, siblings, parents, grandparents and whoever else is part of their household bubble. And some children will become sick with inflammatory syndrome, usually some time after previously having contracted and developed antibodies to the COVID 19 virus. Screening for and reducing the risk of spread where children are involved is going to be far riskier than other workplaces where only mature adults who fully understand the need for and rules of social distancing are present. Nevertheless too many
of our service sector workers cannot return to work if there is no one is
looking after their children. Therefore restarting the economy leaves us with no choice but to put both service sector workers and childcare providers in double jeopardy. If the service sector workers
themselves don't unknowingly bring the virus into their home, there is still a good chance that their children will have caught the virus from an asymptomatic classmates and bring the virus into the house!
Be that as it may, given that 70% of Canada's workforce is employed in the service sector, they must go back to work. Lending billions of dollars to failing airline and oil industries that in all probability will go into bankruptcy long before they can repay these loans may be an extremely foolhardy investment on economic grounds, but it is nevertheless a wise investment in the political futures of elected representatives. But that does not extend to giving free money to service sector workers minions so they can stay safely at home and sit on their duffs! An economy cannot be restored if people forget their proper place in it! Fortunately the problem of childcare too can similarly be solved by ensuring that daycare providers,
school teachers, school bus drivers, etc. will also find themselves without any source of income should they fail to take up their yoke and choose to continue safely social distancing with their
own children in their own homes.
Decision-making power was never the
purview of the lowly underpaid service sector workers. Much care has
been taken to maintain the pecking order --to ensure in the post-COVID 19 economy it continues to be the employers, not the employees, who retain decision-making power. That's why whenever possible, instead of directly providing
an income to unemployed workers, governments choose to subsidize
employers in exchange for them keeping unemployed workers on the payroll. Similarly, rather than providing individuals and businesses unable to pay their rent with money, governments instead encouraged landlords to apply for subsidies with the expectation that they would pass on their savings to tenants. (Many landlords who had long wanted to get rid of their tenants so they could increase rents turned down the subsidies.) Thus it is the employers, not employees, who will determine whether or not the benefits of reopening up for business outweigh the risks. Once employers feel that they have put enough safeguards in place
to keep their employees “reasonably safe" as stipulated by government guidelines, they will be allowed to re-open. Former employees who refuse to return will suddenly find themselves ineligible for EI or CERB benefits, and therefore obliged to return regardless of whether they feel it is
safe to do so or not. Workers who think their working environment is unsafe can appeal. If they live long enough
for their appeal to be heard, and if they and their legal team manage to convince the province that they were indeed exposed to an unreasonable
amount of risk, and if after all that they are still being exposed to unacceptable level of risk, their benefits will be reinstated. Until then they
and all those who share their household bubble must accept whatever
level of risk their employers deem to be acceptable under the circumstances and in accordance with their interpretation of government guidelines.
"We will get
through this" is refrain we often hear from our leadership. And undoubtedly most of us will. But there will be a few bubbles burst before this pandemic is over. Bubbles based on false assumptions that former levels of demand for tourism, air travel, fossil fuels, restaurant food, hotels, office space etc. will be restored; Bubbles based on the assumption that the economy will recover in time to fend off a recession and an unprecedented increase in declarations of bankruptcy; Bubbles based on assumptions that governments and society have learned their lesson and will henceforth place a higher value on the welfare of its most vulnerable citizens, and acknowledge and properly remunerate the contributions and sacrifices of their most essential workers will also deflate, succumbing to pressure from the usual more influential decision-makers in the economy. But these won't be the only bubbles to burst. Nor will they be the first.
The first bubbles to burst will we the protective household social-distancing bubbles that for a short while protected the working poor, primarily employed in the service sector, from disproportionate risk and exposure. Their protective bubbles are about to be deliberately burst by the state in an effort to force them back to work. This group includes racial minorities, foreign workers, personal care providers, and indigenous peoples. They and their children and households, much like Greta Thunberg and her generation, will be sacrificed on the alter built to that old but omnipotent and increasingly demanding God --the God of economic growth.
It will be thus. We are all in this storm together, but we're not all in the same boat. Some of us are treading water, clutching to a plank like a refugee in the Mediterranean. Others are social-distancing in their mansions complete with swimming pools and gymnasiums.
Unless we seize this opportunity to build a new, just, sustainable and inclusive economy on the rubble left by this global pandemic; an economy that values the lives, safety, health and rights of workers no matter what their nationality or where they live on this planet; an economy rooted in the abundance provided by a healthy, appreciated, respected and well cared for planet; an economy that prioritizes our collective and universal well-being and seeks to promote our collective opportunity to thrive. An economy that rejects and has completely abandoned the unsustainable annihilating environmentally destructive perpetual pursuit of economic growth .
