When it comes to the mask requirement, Austria’s government is going a “special way” – the eXXpress reported. Although there are only 81 corona infected people in intensive care, Health Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens) wants to keep FFP2 masks in essential trade until at least July 8 (!). After the trade had already revolted against it, the GPA union now spoke up: “The mask has been abolished in school, at work, in concerts, in the stadium and almost everywhere else,” explains Chairwoman Barbara Teiber. “Only if you are a commercial employee do you still have to wear a mask all day – when it will soon be 30 degrees Celsius. It is enough!”
Teiber asks the minister to work a day in the mask trade himself: “Mr. Minister, if you store hundreds of kilos of vegetables yourself with a mask in the heat, knowing that you can only take them off again in a few hours, then you would no longer force the commercial clerks to this ordeal. We invite you to work a full working day in the supermarket with a mask.”
Like the commercial employees, the GPA union has supported all measures since the beginning of the pandemic. “But if thousands are now allowed to sing, shout and hug each other close together without masks, as is the case at concerts or sporting events, then commercial employees must finally be able to end the mask requirement,” explains the trade unionist.
