If anything sums up Boris Johnson’s complete lack of understanding of and empathy with working class people and even many middle class people, his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the best possible example. His pampered posh boy old Etonian, Oxbridge background has provided him with a world view that bears little or no resemblance to that of the working man or woman. Take, for example, his comments about telling workers to go back to work.
“Those who cannot work from home should now speak to their employer about going back to work,” announced Johnson, as if the decision stay at home had been made by the all-powerful worker.
A man asks Johnson a question at yesterday’s press conference: “How do people return to work with no childcare available?” Johnson replies it’s “an obvious barrier… that I’m sure employers will agree with, so stay at home if you can.” As John McEnroe once put it: “You cannot be serious!”
In many workplaces, no matter how respectful and thoughtful managers are, workers still do what they are told. Less than a quarter of workers are represented by trade unions that themselves have been weakened by decades of Conservative governments. Bosses are still bosses, workers are still workers. It may not be horrible bosses sending scruffy oiks up chimneys, but the principle remains the same.
The truth is that the heat is on. The gutter press, exemplified by Rupert Murdoch’s drooping organ, the Sun, is losing readers by the shedload and let’s hope it stays that way. And yet, the paper read by more working class people than any other, basically says that many its readers are workshy and should go back to work.
The influential hard right chair of the Tory 1922 committee ‘Sir’ Graham Brady went much further. He wanted the government to act on “removing restrictions and removing the arbitrary rules and limitations on freedom as quickly as possible.”
“The public have been willing to assist,” he continued. “If anything, in some instances it may be that the public have been a little bit too willing to stay at home. (My italics.)
“I am sure I am not the only member who has heard from employers who are struggling to fulfil orders because it is difficult to get employees back from furlough. We all know how critical it is that they ought to be able to get their workers back so that we make sure that the jobs remain when the furlough period ends.”
No mistaking Brady’s words, there. Workers are happy to take the money and are refusing to go back to work. Tosh and nonsense, of course. Workers are not dictating what happens with the furlough: the Conservative government brought it in and bosses decided who is furloughed, not workers who have literally no say in matters.
Brady is not the only Tory attacking workers for obeying the government’s instruction to stay at home and now of course Johnson states that it’s lazy workers who are refusing to work because they’re presumably addicted to furlough. Tell that to the thousands of workers being furloughed by large manufacturers in our area. They are not “a little bit too willing to stay at home”; they’re terrified of the huge jobs cuts that are coming down the road because they know that the jobs market is in turmoil, with few if any decent well-paid jobs to replace the ones they have, if the worst comes to the worst.
Of course, it could be that Johnson and the other senior Tories are actually addressing their comments indirectly to companies rather than workers, via the language of blaming lazy workers instead of criticising their fat cat friends in industry for fear of losing their political donations. I think it’s a combination of cynical signalling and a complete lack of understanding of how working people live their lives.
Most of us would happily give up on this enforced hermit-like time of leisure order to resume a normal life. None of us invited this ghastly virus to spread through our country. It was the politicians who by their sheer incompetence made that even worse than it might have been. If anyone is to blame for a quarter of the workforce being furloughed, take a look in the mirror, Mr Johnson. It happened on your watch when you were asleep at the wheel, so don’t attack workers for your own incompetence and inadequacies. Grow a pair, accept responsibility and enrol for the school of life. You never know: you might learn something. It’s never too late. Is it?
