Packrat got a call from work, letting her know that she’s supposed to attend a training next month. Packrat is a school bus driver, and the buses are sitting unused for the time being. The supervisor assured her that there would be precautions taken at the training (masks, desks 6 feet apart), but several hours in an enclosed space is still a risk. Packrat (and I hope her co-workers and union) will be pushing to change it to online. But I can’t wrap my head around why it’s so important to the administration to go through the motions of working.
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We’re fortunate, of course, that she’s able to get paid during the lockdown. And I’m fortunate that I’m able to mostly work at home. I’m a CPS worker, but not on the “front line” anymore. Most of my job function is controlled by court schedules, and for more than a month there wasn’t any court except for major emergencies. My agency has been very fixated on productivity: resisting telecommuting for as long as they could, then immediately demanding pages of signed agreements on what we would get done, how we would prove it to our supervisor, and how often we would check in.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Democrats keep trying to provide financial relief to people who have been financially devastated by the pandemic. Republicans keep fretting that payments might accidentally go to someone who wasn’t broke enough, and gasping at the specter of someone making making as much money from unemployment as from working. (The latter seems like an excellent argument for raising wages, not reducing unemployment.)
The common thread running through all this is the notion of “moral hazard:” the fear that if someone gets money they didn’t earn, they’ll become bad, lazy, people who don’t want to work. Naturally, there’s a class aspect to this: it’s okay for Mitt Romney to get millions from his stock holdings, even though there’s no work involved. But for a service worker or unemployed person to get something for nothing is deemed immoral.
Here’s the thing: we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and the most moral thing we can do is help each other stay alive. For the vast majority, that means staying away from other people. Every person who stays home — whether officially working or not — is one less opportunity for the disease to spread. That’s our job right now. The moral hazard is the danger of losing sight of that.
On to Top Comments!
Highlighted by Denver11:
Northwatch had the perfect response to people who complain of having to “hold their nose” to vote for the Democrat.
From your humble (if distancing antisocially) diarist:
Meteor Blades cuts to the heart of the issue in Chodedc’s diary So you’re willing to kill for the “economy.”
Top mojo, courtesy of mik:
Picture quilt, courtesy of jotter: