We're a manufacturer, so sadly most of the staff have to be on site to work. Management are also hiding behind the 'essential worker' veil on the grounds that we make bits of fancy pipe for the oil and gas industry. Most of the shop floor workforce are over 55, many with underlying conditions due to decades of work in manufacturing and other shitty environments.
Bottom line is that there's a fairly reasonably chance that if we shut down for coronavirus we may never open again. The industry is not doing well, and our company was in incubation prior to this. Although sales have picked up this year, the impact from the combined factors of oil price and corona could kill us. So it's an awkward position.
Management have buried their head in the sand for as long as possible. I've been working from home for 3 weeks now, and that's only because schools closed. I spent two weeks before that pestering the IT department to find out what facilities were in place to work from home should it come to it, and was resoundingly ignored. It was only the school closures that made them move. The rest of the office staff were still in the building with no contingency in place until 3 days after Bumblecunt Johnson put the country in faux-Lockdown.
The majority of my work (design engineer) is PC based so it's fairly easy for me to work from home (except for distractions of kids, trying to get them doing school work, and a general feeling of 'can't be arsed'). Others aren't so lucky.
My partner does something clever with her biology degree, her company makes test kits for blood typing that's used in the NHS (like to identify what blood you need when you go in for emergency surgery etc), so she still has to go to work. Her employer has been much better, and they've all been issued with various items of PPE which must be worn at all times. They've even enforced 2m separation in the canteen and break rooms, and staggered breaks etc to limit the number of people in one area. Her team is fairly small and they've not quite worked out if there's a better way for them to work but it is being looked at.
All in all, it's a bit fucking strange right now.
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If Feds call you and say something bad on me, it may prove what I said are truth, they are afraid of it.
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