A business is supposed to be responsible to avoid hiring people into hazards they didn’t sign up for when they were hired, but now cannot leave for risk of being jobless in the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
The issue is, should they regulate the particular behavior of a corporation, by dictating their business practices? No. Other things they could have done:
Rule that businesses have to protect their employees in certain ways (masks, sanitization etc)
Rule that employees density must be reduced (fewer per building etc)
Rule that testing should be done to detect issues quickly
Instead, they decided to make lists of what should be shipped. Which backfired, since Amazon can't keep the doors open on a tiny list of products. And further, the list was wrong. Who says I don't need 6 yards of plastic sheeting, to separate my house into separate zones and reduce infection from quarantined individuals? What about small plastic bottles to dole out hand sanitizer to family members that are essential personnel not being supported by their institution? What about 100 products the French never thought of, that can help?
It was a small-minded wrong-headed decision, just ripe for unintended consequences and disaster. Which they got.
Those folks will be jobless soon, but now it's because of the French decision.
I wouldn't assume that more specific instructions weren't given or implicit, even if the article doesn't mention them: the ruling came after unions' complaints, that surely were specific.
Also the list of what can be shipped is not based in what's useful, but in what would cause more trouble to stop than to allow, considering that both put lives in danger.
Maybe the court didn't think stopping non-essential goods was a way to reduce the risk. Maybe they thought that essential goods are worth the risk, but non-essential goods aren't. That seems like it might be closer to the business of the French legal system.
Essential businesses are open, and nonessential businesses are closed for safety reasons, and if a business is partially essential and not safe enough then...
A business has social responsibility, in this case protect its workers. The part of those who are sendings non food, non health related item are indeed better at home.
Where I live huge chains of karaoke, shops, restaurant, and smaller restaurants too have closed by themselves without any government or court order in order to protect the people.
