What is the definition of a "Front Line Worker"?

Anyone basically not in an office or behind a computer....


Its basically anyone that is dealing face to face with the public.....

I would define this very narrow: anyone that needs to deal with the ill and without whom it would not function. Only medical workforce in other words.

That does not mean there are no other important functions, like supermarket employees to name one, but if push come to shove these functions can be done without.

bigar wrote: »

I would define this very narrow: anyone that needs to deal with the ill and without whom it would not function. Only medical workforce in other words.

That does not mean there are no other important functions, like supermarket employees to name one, but if push come to shove these functions can be done without.

So those working with the elderly in nursing homes, prisons, residential care services, gardai, fire fighters aren’t front line? We can’t do without any of them or those working in supermarkets, manufacturing, deliveries at the moment either

- Healthcare Workers
- Carers
- Food Production workers
- Delivery Drivers
- Gardai

That's just what I can think of off the top of my head.

Alot of people working in healthcare, gardai, firefighters, teachers to an extent.

In the current world it is hard not to consider the retail (grocery at least) and delivery drivers too but probably fall more appropriately under the title of essential workers.

bigar wrote: »

I would define this very narrow: anyone that needs to deal with the ill and without whom it would not function. Only medical workforce in other words.

That does not mean there are no other important functions, like supermarket employees to name one, but if push come to shove these functions can be done without.

Good luck with your foraging.

bigar wrote: »

I would define this very narrow: anyone that needs to deal with the ill and without whom it would not function. Only medical workforce in other words.

That does not mean there are no other important functions, like supermarket employees to name one, but if push come to shove these functions can be done without.

I do not see a single way food supply can be done without. You might have aspirations of surviving with them closed but 5 million others in a variety of other situations aren't.

I'd say front line in this context is everyone required to keep everyone else safely in their houses as long as is required.

Customs officers I would consider to be frontline workers. Keeping the goods coming into the country moving so in turn supermarkets, pharmacy’s and shop stay stocked and no shortages of anything. Same goes for truck drivers

Paulzx wrote: »

Yeah. History will never remember the Covid 19 pandemic

Only 39 million cases and 1 million deaths so far......

It has to be above 10 million to even register on your consciousness.

Sorry folks but outside the medical staff dealing with sick patients everyone else is a worker.

I saw on another site a beauty salon worker saying they were front line.


There’s a massive gulf between doing someone’s nails and working in a hospital dealing with sick and dying patients. Pretending anything else is just disgusting.

Zebra3 wrote: »

WHO gives 1,350,000 deaths per annum from road deaths, but nobody bats an eyelid.

Society invests billions every year internationally to reduce road deaths, entire sectors of employment exist to prevent it. More over substantial R&D goes into reducing road deaths and the overall aim of some technologies is to eliminate it entirely.

Having been a frontline worker, I would think the following are frontline, gardaí, HCW, soldiers, civil defence, mountain rescue, navy, coast guard, ya know, the people you call in an emergency.

Essential services are the ones that back up the above, and keep the country going, so shops, lab workers, scientists, radiographers, courts, judges, truck drivers, ya know like the people who maintain food supples and help maintain law and order.

After this, electrical workers, carpenters, plumbers, teachers maybe.


I think of it like this, in the event of an apocalypse who am I yelling for, and the first port of call is not the philiosophy lecturer or the history teacher, sorry guys.

It is the people who can save people and maintain law order, food supples and maintain or reintroduce stabiility.

Teaching is not an essential service, people are not screaming for teachers in a famine, earthquake, landslide, etc. They are screaming for the services that can help save people, make them safe, maintain law and order, provide shelter and food, electricity, and clean water. After all of this when everything is stable, education comes into play.

When I arrive at the scene of an accident, no one wants to hear, stand back I am a primary/secondary school teacher, or I am a librarian I read about this in a book, grand if that is all there is. They want to hear stand back I am a nurse/doctor/ paramedic.