The dark side of smart work: transportation, canteens and office services are in crisis

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The return of September, with the resumption after the holidays and the reopening of schools, forgets some sectors that will remain (or almost) quiet in the coming weeks. And, perhaps, they will continue to be hit hard throughout 2020. It is the workers operating in related industries who have been emptied of smart work on a large scale due to the Covid-19 health emergency. Local transport, company canteens, maintenance workers, cleaning, warehouse workers. For these sectors, the crisis generated by the confinement was only the beginning: the extreme prudence with which they will continue to manage returns to the workplace to avoid contagions will, in fact, be a threat to the continuity of the accounts of these companies. , except for those who have not been able to radically renew their business.

Before the pandemic, the average time Italians spent from home to work was one and a half hours a day and the average distance traveled was 49 kilometers a day. For a total of 22.4 million employees who commuted daily by public transport to get to the workplace (data from Istat 2019).

The local transport crisis

Millions of home-to-work trips were canceled during the peak of the emergency (compared to 570,000 pre-Covid smart workers). Today, the Ministry of Labor still estimates that 800,000 private employees work from home. But the figure is certainly underestimated, given that these are the only corporate communications received in Rome. To these must be added then the employees of the Public Administration (50% in remote activities until December 31), with whom we reached 3.5 million people in smart working. “In the coming months – declares the president of the association of personnel directors of Aidp, Isabella Covili Faggioli – smart work will be confirmed in many companies, until we finally emerge from the pandemic emergency. Our forecast is that for around 20/30 percent of the companies it will be structural, obviously with very different diffusion levels from those experienced in emergencies and with very marked sectoral differences.

Two billion fewer passengers

So far, according to estimates by Anav, the association of local public transport companies belonging to Confindustria, the average reduction in passengers transported in the January-August period, compared to the same period in 2019, was around two billion units. (about 60%). For the last four months of the year, taking into account the resumption of teaching activities and the mandatory removal of vehicles, a further decrease of around 30% is expected (equivalent to 510 million trips). An impact that, on the income of companies in the sector, translates into losses from lost entries of 1.3 billion at the end of August and that could reach one thousand and 700 thousand euros in the whole of 2020. At these figures, then, Anav recalls that it is necessary to add 150 million charges related to the reimbursement of unused travel tickets provided for in article 215 of the relaunch decree. “In the medium term – says Giuseppe Vinella, president of Anav – it is necessary to rethink the widespread use of smart work, which has also played an important role in emergency management, but now runs the risk of becoming a new crisis tool for entire sectors of the economy. Not only for transport, but for our cities, already very affected by the absence of tourists.

Dining room and office services

In addition, prolonged smart work could translate into 340 million fewer meals served in company canteens in 2020: the Oricon observatory recalls that there are still 61 thousand workers laid off or laid off (out of 96 thousand) in collective catering, by in its mostly women and with an average age of around 50 years, making it difficult to relocate. In June, corporate catering recorded a 68% drop in turnover. The revenues of the entire sector, according to the most optimistic forecasts, will go from 4,000 million in 2019 to just over 2.7 in 2020 (-34%).