Is furloughing workers the best way to save jobs in the coronavirus crisis?

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business News, Business, Investing, News

4.1 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every year Collins Dictionary chooses its word of the year and just three months into 2020, it feels like coronavirus might be a shoe-in for the title.

But among the other words likely to be picked as high-fliers, it seems that furlough will also be in with a shout.

Until a few weeks ago, it's unlikely many people had ever considered what being furloughed would mean, but now it's the topic on many workers’ minds.

The concept of asking workers to go on furlough lies at the heart of the government’s coronavirus jobs rescue scheme – as it seeks to stall firms making people redundant and offers to pay 80% of their wages up to £2,500 a month.

But is picking up the wage bills of big businesses a wise move, will it help save jobs and is the price worth paying because the cost of not doing it is worse?

On this week’s podcast, Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce and Georgie Frost discuss what it means to be furloughed and whether the emergency plan can work.

They also look at the travel industry chaos and how airlines attempts to dig themselves out of a hole by dodging cash refunds is backfiring.

Why aren’t people getting money back for cancelled flights – and is there a way forward that could help airlines and customers?

Also on the agenda are the household bills rising at just the wrong time – and finally, at the opposite end of the scale, how did Agent Million deliver this month’s Premium Bond jackpot news to the lucky winners while still managing social distancing?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Take 1,352.
0:02.9	Welcome to This Is Money.
0:04.1	I'm Georgie Frost, and alongside me and editor Simon Lambert today is assistant editor Lee Boyce.
0:10.1	And coming up, up until a couple of weeks ago, you'd be forgiven for never actually having heard of the word.
0:14.9	But now you might find yourself furloughed.
0:17.2	But what does that actually mean?
0:19.1	Why are we all talking about it?
0:22.3	But as workers continue to be hit, attention is turning to the banks. They've got a taxpayer helping hand during the financial
0:28.2	crisis. So should they be doing more to repay the favour now? The financial regulator certainly
0:33.7	think so. One industry begging for help is the travel industry as EasyJet
0:39.0	grounds flights. How do you solve the mess that it finds itself in right now? Simon is going to
0:44.6	propose a solution. We also still have a new tax year on the way. Certainly will be running us
0:49.3	through the April money changes that will impact your wallet, plus a pensions blunder, which has
0:53.9	been going on for years,
0:55.6	left a couple of This Is Money readers out of pocket to the tune of thousands of pounds, but are you being
1:00.8	underpaid too? And in an era of lockdowns and social isolation, how does Agent Millionaire
1:06.7	deliver premium bond jackpot winners? They're good news. You can stay up to date, of course.
1:11.6	With all the latest breaking money news, just go to this is money.com.uk.uk, or download the app
1:17.5	first. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the chances unveiled a number of measures over the
1:24.3	past weeks to save jobs and support businesses and continues to do so
1:29.1	at some pace. But what lies at the heart of the coronavirus job retention scheme is something
1:35.4	you may never have heard of before, let alone think that it would now apply to you. Now, the scheme
	...

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