Really, Matt Hancock, do you not know why people work when they're ill? | Owen Jones

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Even in a pandemic, the level of sick pay is dire. No wonder Britain seems to have a ‘work till you drop’ culture

It should be impossible to be shocked by anything in 2020, let alone the latest example of ministerial chutzpah tossed on to a Mount Everest of Tory shamelessness. Yet this week Matt Hancock, secretary of state for health and car crash interviews, pondered: “Why in Britain do we think it’s acceptable to soldier on and go into work if you have flu symptoms or a runny nose, thus making your colleagues ill?” He went on, blaming those who believe that “as long as you can get out of bed you should get into work”.

Truly, here is a mystery for Hercule Poirot: rather than being driven by a “work till you drop” culture, could the propensity of many British workers to toil when ill actually have something to do with their country being an outlier in another regard – namely, in its derisory level of sick pay? Britons stricken with coronavirus have the lowest mandatory sick pay of the OECD industrialised nations as a proportion of average earnings. It’s not workaholism dragging the ill to their offices and factory floors: it is the basic and inescapable need to pay bills and feed the children.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/367rWv5

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