In the hullabaloo of corporate profit warnings, City fundraisers and rent ruckuses, it’s easy to lose sight of the impact UK corporate news is having on real lives.
So, as details emerged of The Restaurant Group’s decision not to reopen many diners after furloughing, the shares excitedly leaped. That’s fair enough — the company will be worth more once it cuts its overheads.
But the City must not forget each job loss that results is a disaster for the person involved and their dependants. A future of fretting about the rent, feeding the family or buying the kids’ school kit.
And a disproportionate amount of those hit hardest will be from BAME backgrounds where the economic cards were already statistically stacked against them.
As we teeter on the brink of a recession the likes of which none of us have ever seen, we should all be trying to ameliorate the impact of Covid job cuts on those who need those jobs most.
London is not America, where the current civil unrest stems partly from failures of companies and policymakers to bring jobs and hope to black communities.
But if we can’t figure how to ease the pain for those set for the dole queues now, we risk creating a similar us-and-them tension that could take a generation to resolve.
What do we need? A big focus on training and investment into black entrepreneurs could be a start. But we really need a holistic BAME recovery strategy from Westminster, in collaboration with business. Let’s turn this Covid catastrophe into an opportunity to boost BAME chances. The alternative, playing out in the US, is unthinkable.
