From the logic of the ‘conservative’ welfare state—as Gøsta Esping-Andersen defined the mainland-European social-insurance model in his classic welfare-regimes typology—this is nothing to worry about. Yet, from a social-justice perspective such lobbying is intolerable. The crisis is revealing who are the real victims of the downturn. The lockdown has struck the entire services sector, which comprises more than three-quarters of western European economies. Within this huge sector freelancers and small entrepreneurs were those affected most directly by the economic losses because they lacked the established safety net that comes into effect for standard employees, as Esping-Andersen already emphasised in 1990. [...]
The crisis points to another weak spot of the current order. The coronavirus has generated a vocabulary which cuts across the conservative welfare state’s normative assumptions and legal categories—the notion of systemic importance. Thus, the already fragile concept of standard employment on which the conservative welfare state rests becomes a new faultline. Interestingly, these groups are among those in the labour market who lack a strong collective voice. It is estimated that only around 5 per cent of German caregivers are members of trade unions. What is more, given their below-average income it is unlikely that workers in the critical infrastructure would benefit from a buyers’ premium on cars. [...]
So, even though Covid-19 does not stop at the rich, as has been suggested by some observers, the crisis has hit the most vulnerable hardest—not only on a global scale but also within the protected space of national welfare states. Viewed through the lens of the conservative welfare state, the powerful foray by the German car industry was no surprise at all—an attempt at self-help by the established insiders. Yet the coronavirus crisis also provides a chance to reconsider the social rights of labour-market outsiders and the social value of (often female) essential workers.
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