There are up to 2m jobs at risk from #Covid19 in the hospitality, arts, recreation and entertainment industries, because social distancing is so hard for them. Many businesses in these industries are shut by government fiat and are unlikely to be able to trade...
in any kind of normal way for months, if ever again. Which is why owners and staff feel particularly sore and anxious about aspects of the Treasury's original and revised furlough scheme. On the revised scheme, owners and employers are perturbed by the...
chancellor's announcement that they will have to chip in for some of the furlough costs, from August. Because - if as seems likely - they are prevented by order of the prime minister from trading and generating revenues, they understandably question...
where the money will come from to pay even a proportion of wages. And they remain disappointed (to put it mildly) that the Treasury refuses to include tips (which are taxed through the PAYE system) when calculating earnings for furloughing purposes - since this means that...
those working in restaurants, bars, hotels and so on are receiving roughly 40% of their normal earnings from furlough rather than the 80% that is printed on the side of the Treasury Job Retention Scheme tin and workers in other industries receive. It is not surprising...
that some in the industry believe ministers and officials see their industry as somehow second class, not proper. But if thousands of businesses collapse, and if hundreds of thousands are made redundant, the importance of the industry may become more conspicuous, though too late
officials somehow regard hospitality as somehow a second class industry. When
