Dramatic federal and state government announcements over past days about shutting down non -essential work had an immediate impact on Melbourne city workers on Monday. It wasn’t only about mass lay-offs but also an exodus from workplaces to homes.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ announcement of a statewide shutdownof non-essential services to curb the spread of coronavirus, required fast decisions by Melbourne businesses on Monday.
It wasn’t a hard one. Office workers have to move their gear home and work from there.
Around 5pm, there were hundreds of workers with their computers, stationery even their chairs outside their workplace waiting their partners’ car or a cab to move to their home office and continue to work from there.
Victorian state government employee Lachlan Mckenzie had a full trunk of gear including his work computer at 5 pm in front of his workplace on Exhibition St in the CBD. Just 20 metres away, Chetna Clugston also was waiting to be picked up by car to take her work gear including her chair home. “The boss doesn’t know that I am taking my chair with me” she says, laughing.
On Monday city workers also cleared out supplies of webcams, for video conferencing, from tech shops around city. “I looked in a number of computer shops and couldn’t find a single webcam” one worker said.
