We are surviving on my small part-time wage
My husband missed qualifying for furlough by one day, and his boss is dodging queries.
Allison Robertson*
My husband worked for BT and recently left due to depression at work, because call centres are really tough mentally. He started his new retail job a week later and was much happier.
I work for a restaurant and went part-time in February., three weeks after he started his new job. Then he started to get symptoms. They get a lot of elderly customers so we thought it would be reckless not to self isolate. Then, a few days later, the business was made to close by the government.
My restaurant had already closed but I was furloughed thankfully, and the restaurant is paying us out of pocket weekly (since we are always paid weekly), so we don’t have to wait weeks for payment from the government.
My husband’s boss, on the other hand, is dodging everyone’s queries, and is unable to furlough him along with the rest of the staff because he started on 29 February officially. And now he’s dodging demands to pay my husband for the three weeks he worked.
My husband went to BT to ask his old managers if he could be furloughed but BT isn’t furloughing their staff.
So, at the moment, all we are getting is my weekly part time wage every Thursday and desperately trying to pay our landlord as well as all the bills.
It’s just mental that, if you’re currently on someone’s payroll, you can’t be furloughed because of a random technicality.
I keep trying to reassure my husband that the government will eventually step up, but we’re defaulting on a lot of utility bills right now. Thankfully, he is a good cook, so we can get canned goods. We had savings that we’ve now blown through (I was saving for my citizenship visa). So we’ve been able to make it this far, but if he doesn’t receive a wage soon, it will be impossible to pay for anything
It’s like it’s a desperate waiting game to see if the government will redress furlough.
I assume we’ll just have to default on our bills and deal with the fallout when the lockdown is lifted. I can’t imagine that the government would want everyone to get into such a depressive debt. It just doesn’t make economic sense.
We were planning on moving to New York in the next few years because my parents are getting unwell due to various medical problems, but I can’t leave the country for more than two years, otherwise I lose my visa, so citizenship was a big step.
I’m so thankful for my own workplace, they’ve communicated and been with us every step of the way. This crisis really shows the kind of company you work for.
I’ve seen a lot of people describe this new starter situation as the government ‘punishing’ people for trying to better their lives. I think they’ve just not thought it through properly because it’s such a crisis, no one knows the right thing to do.
But I would have expected them to act much faster, or even mention it, once they realised they’re leaving behind a huge amount of people. Their silence on the matter has just been ridiculous
But I was really proud of our government for coming to a bipartisan agreement so quickly on furlough, and it made me proud to see that a government could actually come together since that’s impossible to see from my home country.
I wish they would act with the same swiftness to help all of their constituents when there is an obvious flaw
Overall, I feel like I’m playing this weird game of chicken with the government. I don’t want to freak out because that doesn’t help, and I have no idea when or even if this will get resolved. But I still have to buy food and pay my landlord, so I’m just doing that until I can’t anymore and I’ll deal with it then.
Because what else can we do but wait?
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Adam Ramsay | Radio Free (2020-04-15T16:20:39+00:00) Pandemic poverty: “I can't afford to live on £94 a week”. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/04/15/pandemic-poverty-i-cant-afford-to-live-on-94-a-week/
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