“Some people – employees with poor bargaining power and no savings – may find themselves effectively coerced into a return to work as normal.”
Yea well I mean if they’re currently not working and later they’re not working, then they’re not working.
The guy across the street from me manages a large section of a manufacturing plant in the area. He oversees several dozen employees. They were all called back to work to start a week ago Monday. Everybody but a handful said they were coming back. He told a handful they could have an extra week to think about it if they wanted, but he would then need to fill their roles with other employees if they don’t come back.
Not 1 of them suggested he shut the plant down and put all 75 of them out of work. They worked together to get the employees to file for unemployment and stay home. The current law allows for a boosted pay for at least another couple months. True, if they are comfortable down the road in returning to work, their jobs might not be available to them. But situations like that come up every single day, Do I stay home with kids longer. One of my parents needs extra care. Special needs child. Etc.
This is a false dichotomy and you know it.
If we weren't in the middle of an epidemic involving a disease that is easily contagious and deadly too boot, then the argument might have some relevance. (Though, as the second link shows, not a whole lot.) But, of course, we are. It isn't that your bud should close his plant; it's that we should provide him with the wherewithal to a) keep everyone on staff until it is safe to move them back to work and b) make the workplace safe for his employees. We
did that and he still insists that his workers show up when a)
he finds it profitable and b) when
he finds conditions that may threaten their health sufficiently reduced.
I'm not certain, but I bet the employment contract his workers signed on for didn't include, "Show up for work when I think you should put your health at risk." But that's what he's saying, stripped of all the ornaments. Since the government has stepped in and given him leeway to avoid such a coercive and arrogant course, I'd say he's obliged to at least take his workers views on their own health with more then a grain of salt. To portray his insistence as business as usual is disingenuous at best. To portray it as within his rights means that his employees don't have any.