Suddenly we realise how important many workers on euphemistic "contracts" are - Zero Hours, Fixed Term, Agency Staff, the Self Employed. Also people on the "National Living Wage" (£8.72 for 25's & over). All of these people provide important services to society. All of them live on the knife edge of no work. All of them are counted as employed. Unemployment was supposedly running at 3.6% in May 2019.
Now all of these people are potentially devastated by Covid 19. Their rights are not the same as people in full time employment. They will be the "collateral damage", another euphemism, of this Pandemic.
Brexit & Covid 19 have tested everyone to the limit. Ironically the first divided us into armed camps & now the latter is bringing us together again. Sadly it has taken a Pandemic plague to do that.
Some good has to come out of all this. If that benefit is that we finally understand that everyone, workers & volunteers, is important to the running of our very complex society, then I for one will be delighted.
The wealthy, the capitalists, the entrepreneurs & even the aristocracy cannot function without us. Hopefully now they actually realise that. Those with inestimable wealth achieved that through the work of others, or an accident of birth. We need everyone to realise that huge wealth, salaries, bonuses & perks are going to be seen in a new light post Covid 19. The workers, those on the "front lines" understand, in a way that others didn't, that they are what keeps consumerism & capitalism going.
Covid 19 kills indiscriminaltely. It will seriously affect the lives of many people - rich & poor. But probably mostly poor. However the rich will know, too late, that they can't take their wealth with them. It would have been better to share it more equitably as Bill & Miranda Gates have been doing for years.
https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2020/03/26/Gates-Foundation-partners-with-industry-on-coronavirus
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