It will be a week full of news for Amazon,

which closed its first quarter in the red since 2015 a few days ago. News of the new health policy comes shortly after two warehouses in Staten Island (New York) voted to unionize. The first victory for the workers was announced in early April when the first union was formed within a company warehouse. The organizing efforts came from the Amazon Labor Union. News on the second election is expected later in the day. The unionization efforts have not been well received by Amazon, which, according to the New York Times, suggested that the proceedings conducted by the National Board of Labor Relations unfairly favored the counterparty.

Companies are adjusting to the new post-pandemic normal in different ways: Walmart, the largest employer in the United States, had already halved the illness paid for Covid-19 infection in January. On the other hand, Airbnb, the popular flat-sharing company has announced that it will let all its employees work remotely, from anywhere in the world, without restrictions. "The world is becoming more flexible," CEO Brian Chesky said in a letter to employees. "We wouldn't have recovered so quickly if it weren't for the millions of people around the world who worked remotely from an Airbnb."The different strategic choices of employers seem to reflect different views of the directions in which the world of work is moving after two years of the pandemic.

Covid-19 and economic inequalities

Introduction

It is often said that the terrible coronavirus pandemic in progress, in addition to not knowing geographical boundaries, does not distinguish between rich and poor. This last statement has, of course, a foundation and is, at least in part, a consequence of the fragility of the geographical boundaries compared to the explosive force of the contagion. But the relationship between Covid-19 and inequalities does not end in the recognition that the economic and social status does not perfectly discriminate between the submerged and the saved. The other relevant aspects are numerous; I will consider four.

The first is the influence that the initial economic conditions have on the exposure to the risk of becoming victims of the virus; the most favorable economic conditions do not eliminate that risk, but the most unfavorable ones can, in various ways, make it very high. The same can be said for the economic consequences of the pandemic, which we can distinguish between the direct ones and those induced by the containment measures of the contagion.

The second is the possibility that initial inequalities act, through various channels, as a multiplier of the devastating effects of the pandemic on health and the economy.

The third is the possibility that, as it unfolds, the pandemic will suddenly drag even those previously occupying economic positions of relative privilege into poverty and deprivation, altering the landscape of poverty and posing new questions to social protection systems.

The fourth is what we might call the pandemic's lasting legacy to inequality. Over a longer time horizon, how will the inequality of this tremendous experience be affected? Can we imagine that the pandemic will favor the emergence of a less economically unequal and more just society or should we fear the opposite?

In these notes I will try to outline an answer to these questions, the relevance of which for putting a hand to a better design of our economic institutions, in the immediate and in the longer term, is self-evident. It will inevitably be a question of partial answers, also due to the still insufficient availability of elements of knowledge. The hope is that they are not misleading.

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