Some people just have to show up for work.

Car transmissions can’t be fixed, Navy warships can’t be built from home

At Bath Iron Works on Maine’s Kennebec River, workers are showing up by the hundreds to build ships for the Navy. At Mike Doherty’s auto repair shop in Everett, Wash., three mechanics continue to fix faulty transmissions and leaky radiators. And while the McDonald’s in Kansas City is closed to sit-down customers, the drive-thru window still needs tending, as does the french fryer.

While many people across the country are hunkered down at home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, armed with laptops and WiFi connections, millions more are required to show up at factories, hospitals and grocery stores to do their jobs. The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted yet another fault line in America’s racial and socioeconomic divisions: those who can do their jobs from home and those who can’t.

As new communities go into lockdown in hopes of slowing the spread of the virus, the people most at risk for getting sick, because they must venture out, are largely people of color, those with only a high school education and those whose incomes are likely to suffer during the ongoing crisis.

The concern came to a head last week as the big three auto manufacturers — GM, Ford and Chrysler — gave in to demands by the United Auto Workers union and took the extraordinary measure of shutting their plants for two weeks amid fears of the pandemic. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said all nonessential businesses in the state had to keep their workforces at home, saying: “This is not life as usual. Accept

it, realize it and deal with it.”

Despite those attempts to limit contact in the workplace, many industries — from aerospace and defense to the service sector — remain open, renewing calls to protect workers’ health and shield them from the financial fallout of the pandemic.

During the past few decades, the growth of the digital economy has made it possible for an expanding number of people to work remotely — nearly 30% of American workers, 35.7 million people, can do that, according to a survey from 2017-18 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But workers who make cars and airplanes, cook french fries, clean hospital rooms, and rely on wrenches and brooms, not internet connections, for their jobs cannot.

Stark divide

The divide is stark within industries. About 60% of people who said they work in “management, business and financial operations” told the BLS that they could work from home. But fewer than 10% of workers said they could do so in categories described as “services,” “construction and extraction,” “installation, maintenance and repair,” “production” and “transportation and material moving.”

There are also divisions along race and class lines: 37% of Asian Americans and 30% of whites said they could work remotely. But only 20% of African Americans and 16% of Hispanics said they had that ability. Almost 52% of those with a college education or higher said they could work from home, but only 4% of those with less than a high school diploma said they could.

“It is really shedding light on some inequalities in a new way,” said Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist for the Labor Department, now at the Economic Policy Institute. “A lot of people who have highly paid, white-collar jobs that are computer-focused can adjust to this crisis without a lot of pain. And then there’s a much larger group that can’t adjust without a lot of pain to themselves and their families.”

Putting themselves at risk

Social media is full of photos of quarantined families gathered around the dining room table, parents with their laptops out, children with their schoolwork spread around them. For those who have the flexibility to work in their pajamas, the coronavirus might become a fun anecdote for the future, if life returns to normal in a few weeks or months.

“We’ll have stories to tell about how we had a little more time together with our family,” said David Wilcox, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “That’s not the case for a line worker at a manufacturing plant. They need to show up at a specific physical location regardless of whether that’s convenient for them or not. And that presents a personal health risk to themselves, and a public health challenge because it also presents a risk to their co-workers.”

In many cases, manufacturing and service-sector workers don’t have paid sick leave, and can’t afford to miss work. That makes life particularly difficult for those who have to scramble to care for elderly parents susceptible to serious illness and look after children home from school.

“A lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck,” said Chris Wiers, president of Local S6 of the Machinists Union that represents 8,000 workers at the Bath Iron Works shipbuilding factory in Maine. “You go two weeks without pay or more and you risk losing your house, your car, and a lot of people have those concerns.”

Terrence Wise, a 40-yearold father of three teenage girls, was sent home 2½ hours before the end of his shift Tuesday night as a manager at a McDonald’s in Kansas City, Mo. The restaurant was serving only drive-thru customers, sales were way down, and so the owner started sending people home.

“I make $13 an hour, so to lose 2½ hours, that’s over $25,” he said. “That’s a meal on the table for my girls. That’s one-fourth of my lighting bill.”

With no paid sick leave or health insurance, he fears things are only going to get worse — more lost hours, possibly layoffs and the difficulty of coming up with the $1,200 a month he needs for rent.

“To say I’m concerned is an understatement,” he said. “I’m scared to death.”

Losing clients

Even some older workers, who are at a heightened risk of dying from the virus should they contract it, are still actively reporting to work.

One is Karla Wagoner, 71, who depends on her $12-anhour income as a nonmedical home health-care aide to meet the $1,750 monthly rent she splits with her son in Fort Collins, Colo. Recently she had to cash out her retirement account to buy a new car after her old one became too expensive to maintain.

Lately, her clients are fearful of an outsider coming into their home, she said, and many have canceled. She has only nine hours booked for the coming week and is worried about what comes next.

“Without the hours, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Wagoner said.

Several unions said they have been struggling to get employers to create safe work environments.