Employees refuse to return to work as long as they’re getting extra $600/week.
wsj.com
wsj.com
Here's the key quote
"When we asked our employees to come back, almost all said, “No thanks.” If they return to work, they’ll have to take a pay cut."
Or maybe the employees are concerned about, you know, the current worldwide pandemic and are in the 72% of Americans that would prefer to stay at home ‘until the doctors and public health officials say it is safe.’ (1)
Or risk their health for <$600/week.
(1) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/despite...
It doesn't really matter because that $600 extra per week will likely end before the restaurant industry recovers, and we'll all be arguing different things then.
In the article it says his cooks start at $15 + $1 in tips. Currently with the extra $600 they are making $25.40 per hour. If he wants them to come back he is essentially asking them to gamble their guaranteed unemployment income on his business doing well in this time. On top of that he asking them to literally risk their lives. I see no reason that he should not take the additional financial and physical risk he is asking his employees to take into consideration when hiring them back. Offer them $30 an hour with a guaranteed minimum number of hours in writing. Labor in a very limited sector is a limited resource for once, employees should take advantage of it. Isn't that what capitalism is all about?
Employees can refuse to return to work for fear of the virus and still get unemployment til later than that date.
Feels like it's going to be awfully hard getting employees back to work at less than $25/hour.
A lot of businesses could be stuck with loans when they thought they were getting "free" money.
Spend another 2 - 3 trillion on true small business loans / grants. Forbid stock buy backs in the future.
McConnell has also indicated he has no interest in giving states any more money for unemployment. So desperate people are going to be even more desperate soon.
What the federal government has done instead is an abomination aimed at falsely propping up share prices. We are very possibly looking at the onset of a massive depression spurred on by just plain poor crisis management at the federal level.
If you give people $2k and businesses nothing, people aren't going to spend that money on businesses. They're not allowed to do a lot of things they usually spend money on. Retail, restaurants, hotels, live entertainment, airlines, movie theaters, etc would go bankrupt en masse. I'm not sure that's actually a problem. The responsible businesses that had cash would buy the poorly managed businesses at a discount. Long term, this could possibly lead to even worse inequality. Not to mention, a lot of the jobs might be destroyed permanently.
I do agree that I think it would've been better for most people to only give people the money. There would still be a lot of losers.
On the simplest basis, most restaurants and hotels are small businesses. The majority of them would lose their business. $2k would do nothing for them. And the majority of these business owners are decidedly not rich.
In addition, cooks legally can't be paid tips, so he's ripping off his servers (and I'm guessing cooks as well).
Even if he did for some reason want to go back to work, what guarantee does he or the business have that people will show up? On my Facebook timeline (mostly people in GA) there seems to be a universal feeling from both my liberal friends and staunch Trump true believers that they aren’t going to take any chances when it comes to being in crowds.
https://waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans....
Who laid these people off again?
I'm continuously aghast by the number of employers who don't see it as their job to make the job more attractive to employees.
Things like demanding a pegasus-unicorn canidate after they consolidated two jobs into one with the exact oddball combination of skills and experience - and not just seeing it as a bonus target to ask for but holding out for months or years looking for them when they could have been making money by hiring two realistically available competent employees.
At least for me when I worked at a very large company hiring someone and getting the go ahead was this opaque system that went back and forth with recruiters and HR and involved a lot people who did not know anything about the job...
Later on I was looking for work and found myself in recruiter hell or corporate HR hell talking to these people endlessly on the phone about jobs that they clearly did not understand in any way and wasted my time endlessly.
By the time I got to talk to someone at a company that was technical... I finally understood what the job was in a few minutes, they knew who I was, and after a sensible interview they offered me the job.
Side note, big company I worked for was broken up and I was told I should apply for my old job back. Mostly because I liked my coworkers I applied ... and never got a call back because I didn't have a CS degree (folks inside the company figured that one out), for a job that very much doesn't need a CS degree... and a job that I did for 15 years and my coworkers all wanted me back...
That seemed to confirm my theory that hiring has sort of lost its way / gone off track in a lot of ways.
If you want people to stay home to not exacerbate a pandemic, you pay them to stay home.
What makes it any safer today than it was a month ago, when we were seeing exponential growth all over the country?
Most workplaces do not allow social distancing. Many minimum wage employees take transit to work, which does not allow social distancing. Many of them would be completely ruined by medical bills if they catch COVID-19 - even if they don't need to be hospitalized. A single doctor's visit can run you hundreds of dollars in this country. Many of them live with vulnerable people, who would die, if they catch it. Many of them are currently taking care of children.
Are you ready to pay for their medical bills? Their transportation? For rebuilding their workplaces in a manner that allows social distancing? Are you going to watch their child while they are at work?
If not, don't be in such a hurry to send them back to work.
Nope and that's why the $600/week increase is already guaranteed to stay through at least July.
Politicans can choose if they want to re-open, but they don't get to declare a re-opening safe. They aren't qualified to do that. Just because the Kremlin said that there was no radiation risk at Chernobyl didn't make it true.
If I take my car to a mechanic, and he tells me that my brakes aren't working, I can drive away without choosing to pay for repairs. But I can't go around telling people that my brakes are fine.
I don't think the person you've responded to is implying what you seem to think.
So… why doesn't he offer them $25.40 an hour?
Long term health impacts, the risk of infecting loved ones at home, the risks of incurring thousands of dollars of uncovered hospital bills... all of these risks have real costs and I think it's fair to compensate employees who are willing take them in service of their corporations.
And, of course, it's all about the business owner. Here's a thought: your workers have other shit going on, and working a hard, minimum wage job isn't high on the priority list right now. But, no, it's a personal slight to you, Kurt.
I've taken 2 year vacation and going to stay at my homestead
IMO, restaurants we're always a luxury, and only Americans could afford them everyday, at the expense of cheap labor. Glad to see it's fixing now.