The time has come for a first assessment in the professional world, a week after the deconfinement. If the resumption of activity is a good sign, the additional costs generated by the implementation of barrier measures raises fears of an increase in prices for consumers.
After a week of deconfinement, the life of companies starts again, but a question arises: who will pay the bill?
The good news, in fact, is that the activity is slowly starting again. We see it for example in construction. Housing Minister Julien Denormandie said this on Sunday at the microphone: 72% of construction sites restarted against 50% a week earlier.
The bad news is that this restart is done in degraded mode and with sometimes very heavy additional costs. In the building industry, for example, professionals estimate the additional cost of sanitary measures between 15 and 20% of the cost of a site. They estimate that this increases the cost of building a detached house by 20%. In industry, the additional salary cost for an assembly unit would also be of the order of 20% due to the rules of physical distance and the division of labor into teams which do not intersect.
And these additional costs are found everywhere.
In distribution, for example, these additional costs are estimated at around 100,000 euros for a supermarket over the next six months. It is necessary to arrange the cases with Plexiglas, to give gel and masks to everyone, to filter the customers and therefore to increase the number of security guards, to fill the shelves only during closing hours therefore to pay overtime or night bonuses. ..
Part of these costs can be expected to end up being borne by consumers. This is what happens with hairdressers or garage owners, many charge between two and six euros for the cost of barrier measures. Business life is starting again, of course, but slowly and at a cost that is starting to be reflected in the prices.