With the COVID-19 pandemic creating panic world over, most of us have been privileged to be sitting at home during the lockdown. However, not everyone has the same luck. Many workers whose jobs have been considered to be essential still have to go for work, exposing themselves to the outside world, and putting themselves at a greater risk to catch the virus. Colin Thierry, a Staff Writer, and the daughter of a worker whose job has been deemed to be essential, from Saint Louis University talks about the dangers her father is in everyday, the fears they live in, and what needs to be done to have a more egalitarian society.
The essential workers sacrifice their safety and put their own health at risk to ensure that there is minimum disruption in the lives of the general public. There isn’t much the employers can do to help the situation either. While there are extensive measures taken to sanitise surfaces, practise social distancing, and make employees wash their hands repeatedly, these become ineffective in removing the constant stress that the families of these essential workers are in.
While the situation has garnered much attention to the work done by the essential workers, much needs to be done to give them the due respect they deserve and value for the work they do. Thierry suggests that measures need to be taken to ensure that the essential workers earn at least a minimum wage of $15. The workers can also be provided with some rooms to rest and rejuvenate themselves during the stressful work shifts. While the government’s move to provide with $1200 for all the workers with wages equal to or lesser than $75000 is a good measure, Thierry says, instead of providing the workers with a single lumpsum payment, the government needs to ensure that a monthly universal base income of $1000 is met.
N Malavika Mohan