[BLACNWYTE]

Voted Yes.

Ethics, even though being subjective is a very hot topic in our country. We, myself included, are quick to dole out advices and self righteous statements regarding this. It is easy to say that manufacturers and buisnessess are unethical to keep their staff working at the plants or factories during this pandemic. We can say that it is not an essential service, so why are these people going out and getting infected and then spreading it. However, to every person, their work is essential to provide the basic needs for their family. They won't understand this argument that their work is non essential and why it can't be done from their homes.

Does anybody here has a doubt that a factory worker, given the option to work from home with full payment, won't accept that. They will surely WFH, but the very nature of their work is unsuitable for that. Keeping the factories shut and employees paid will be the modern example for killing the goose to get the egg. If the factories are following every protocol laid down by the government and health department then I see no problem with continuing the work.

It is easy to rant on about people being thick headed, going to work in nonessential sector, while sitting in the comfort of one's home, working out of a laptop/desktop, drawing full salary. Also, spare some time to think about those working in essential services like field staff of healthcare, law and order, telecommunications, electricity distribution, public distribution, fire and rescue, fuel pump operators etc., who, forget normal duty hours, had their work load doubled or tripled, along with leaves cancelled since March 2020.

Recently I had a chance to talk to GM sales for a leading five star hotel chain and he told me that even though they don't have even 10% occupancy, even if it's nil occupancy, it is economical to keep the hotel open and sparsely staffed rather than shutting the whole thing down and sending everyone home. Maybe this can be extrapolated to other industries as well. The second wave of infection and second bout of lock down has wiped out many families' savings and peoples' jobs/business.

Sorry if I veered off topic and for the rant. Wanted to get something off my chest.

[Acid Burn]

As stated by many above ethics is very subjective and it varies from every one's own view point.
Just saying that one sector is under non essential hence they should not be asked to come to work as they are at risk is indirectly saying the people who are currently working under essentials are expendable.
Each and every one's life has equal value and when people under essentials took employment they never signed up for this kind of situation.
Still they are the ones who are putting their lives at risk to give you a better quality of life by cleaning your garbage, providing milk, delivering food.
So how is it ethical that they endanger their lives just to provide comfort for the people who are WFH?
There are doctors, nurses, security personnel who are risking both theirs as well as their families lives so that medical aid can be provided to patients. Is it ethical that we expect them to work in such situations where we ourselves don't want to work?
Then there are advocates, bank employees, insurance employees who are not considered essential and are not allowed to travel in trains however are expected to report to work every day. How ethical is that they have to travel 2-3 hrs each day in public buses and endanger their lives.and still provide service to general public?

How ethical is it for Sr. Citizen to be vaccinated on priority and then visit banks for trivial matters and endanger the staff who is not vaccinated?

This issue has arisen only because people are used to the fact of getting free salary sitting home and they want to continue that. When called for work suddenly they remember their lives are at stake. The same people don't think twice while ordering stuff from Amazon/ swiggy/ Zomato because they are not the ones risking their lives.

If you care so much for your lives then sit home without salaries and care for your lives all you want.

From the above rant I am sure you must have guessed by now that I am a banker and hence I have a good idea what's the ground reality for SME. Most of them have gone under or have pumped in their life saving just to stay afloat with a view that things will improve in future. However it's been more than a year that all manufacturing cycles have been disrupted that they can't even gauge what sales they will achieve month on month. However they emis, statutory payments never go away. How is it ethical for an employee to expect salary sitting home doing nothing while their company is going under?
And when they do go under the same employees create such a huge scene and try to gather sympathy that their daily bread is being snatched.

All these strikes and protest is work for the privileged leaders who want to exhort money at the cost of others.
A simple employee understands the fact that he will survive only if they organisation survives and not vice a versa.

[am1m]

Very pleasantly surprised by the direction this thread is taking!

When it started, I expected another covid-related thread that would be eventually dominated by what I've started calling the "typical IT Guy viewpoint" (and to be fair that's mainly because like a typical Indian B-school batch, most of the membership now must be typical IT guys! (Including me!)).

That would be ok, but now I realize that's a very, very limited viewpoint. It's great to be us! Sit safe at home, get paid (most of my team is even asking about "when we'll get pay raises" (while a large part of the country is reeling from more than a year of no earnings)), get the delivery guys to risk their lives so we can get what we need, get our maids to jump through the various hoops that our RWAs dream of just so that they will be 'safe' to work at our homes, nice and isolated from the virus and from the economy itself. Now we've started getting our vaccines on a priority basis too, thanks to private hospitals supplying our companies' vaccination drives. And through all this we also get to virtue signal and judge others: "we support the lockdown!", "lives over livelihood" (yeah, our lives over other people's livelihood!), "people don't have discipline", "why does anyone need to step out?!"

Glad that the viewpoints from people actually working in the real world are finally gaining traction. This pandemic is here for some time yet (one local administrator recently announced that restrictions should continue till cases are zero - good luck with that!). Perhaps someday we'll see that people should be able to judge the risk for themselves and decide what trade off they are willing to do. And those who want to remain in their protective bubble are of course free to do so for as long as they want.

[mvadg]

Originally Posted by am1m

Very pleasantly surprised by the direction this thread is taking!...

Glad that the viewpoints from people actually working in the real world are finally gaining traction. This pandemic is here for some time yet (one local administrator recently announced that restrictions should continue till cases are zero - good luck with that!). Perhaps someday we'll see that people should be able to judge the risk for themselves and decide what trade off they are willing to do. And those who want to remain in their protective bubble are of course free to do so for as long as they want.

Yes, was about to say the same thing. More than anything else people have realized that there are many sides to an issue. This thread is a more "grown up" version of the discussion on the lockdown last year. Hope people can do this with all topics (especially our bureaucrats and politicians) - at least then we could say that this pandemic had a silver lining.

[car_addict]

Originally Posted by Arjun Bharadwaj

The above is very encouraging and inspiring and in general necessary for the economy to stay alive and I voted Yes.

Maybe you could note down the top 5 things your company did right that can serve as a guidance for other to follow sir. Government recommendations are one thing, but to hear it from someone who has operated on ground can give a better picture.

We are not a huge company (about 100 employees in 4 locations) & I don't know how it works to scale. We have taken a lot of precautions. But as Arjun mentioned above, I would like to list out the top 5 for those who could benefit:

1. Repeated education day in and day out with departmental level incentives in bonuses.
2. Those employees who stayed back, without going to their native place, were paid their full salary even during their quarantine/hospitalisation, no questions asked & they could keep their bonus. This removes the incentive for them to come to work even if they are sick & spread it.
3. Hooded air suction over every workstation on the shop floor. Office employees were spread out with more than 12 feet apart. No 2 people can talk to each other without being separated by a plexi-glass wall.
4. Complete physical check-up by a doctor before starting work & end of work. Actual working hours were 6 hours with 2 hours dedicated for check-up. Random 50% testing every 2 days . This was the major thing which helped during the start of the 2nd wave. Pt 2 helped out in any issues with respect to salary.
5. All employees were given petrol & vehicle maintenance expenses for the foreseeable future. People coming from anywhere beyond 3 kms were given accommodation inside factory premises.

There are just too many to list. Hope this helps.