
Employees refuse to return to work as long as they’re getting extra $600/week. - RestlessMind
https://www.wsj.com/articles/our-restaurants-cant-reopen-until-august-11587504885
======
rabboRubble
That restaurant owner who closed two days earlier than he needed out of the
goodness of his heart? Yeah, the reason for that was there was a snowfall in
Portland that kept people home earlier than the order would require. So yeah,
he just avoided being open, paying staff for a day when nobody was going to be
coming in anyway.

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RestlessMind
[http://archive.is/sm6Cy](http://archive.is/sm6Cy)

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econcon
If were them, I'd not return too. Why would anyone take risk to permanently
damaging their lungs for some money they'll not need to survive!?

I've taken 2 year vacation and going to stay at my homestead

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sigmar
How many of these employees saying "no" have to take care of elderly family
members or children that are home from school? Seems mighty presumptive to
assume their reason for not coming back, especially considering he moved to
lay them off so quickly. Who would want to go back to working for someone that
might change their mind again?

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mikestew
I'm amazed at the lack of shame in writing an article admitting that the wages
one pays are less than government assistance. And the entitlement: "where's ma
cheap laborz?!"

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.

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sauwan
I thought you couldn't collect unemployment unless your work has not offered
you work?

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deepsun
Market will fix this. Competitors will come in their place, paying more to
workers and charging higher price.

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.

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chkaloon
I've heard that is an ulterior motive for the Republican governor "open it up"
push. Then they can blame closed businesses on straw men like this, when the
real reason is workers fearing for their and their family's health.

~~~
wonderwonder
Another reason is that the states run a very real risk of running out of
unemployment funds. Mitch McConnell made clear today that he is fine the
states going bankrupt over this as opposed to giving them federal funds. So
its going to end up with no one getting unemployment, everyone out of work and
the federal government sitting on its hands while blaming everyone else.

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JohnTHaller
Never link to the WSJ Opinion section. It's where the 'Fox News affiliated'
really shines through.

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duxup
If your employees don't want to come back, whose fault is that exactly?

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.

~~~
Nasrudith
Would anyone older care to confirm or deny a related observation? It seems the
Great Recession shattered many employeer minds to become absurdly entitled to
the detriment of even their own direct earnings let alone society.

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.

~~~
duxup
I feel like there is some sort of weird world now where in some companies
"hiring someone" is sometimes held hostage / run by people who despite their
job title, made it their job not to hire people.

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.

~~~
wonderwonder
That is indeed the issue. Recruiters are for the most part not technical so
they just read words on the page. Does your resume have all the words on the
page or doesn't it? If not, sorry you are not qualified. Its maddening and one
of the reasons resume writing is so important. Quite often your resume is not
even seen by a real person, its filtered through a word matching algorithm.

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aresant
What an absolutely shit article.

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...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/despite-
scattered-protests-most-americans-support-shelter-in-place-reuters-ipsos-poll-
shows-idUSKCN22336P)

~~~
econcon
There are some countries in the world who don't have lockdown. I am wondering,
what if US imports them to work in US as stopgap solution? Ofc, many of them
might be infected but so can be employees sitting at home for now.

~~~
papermachete
They cannot as the President put immigration on halt.

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tmpz22
It's called unemployment INSURANCE. Workers paid into this insurance through
their state and federal taxes. The insurance is now fulfilling its end of the
bargain. This content is pure clickbait and shameful.

~~~
woofyman
The $600 is in addition to unemployment insurance

------
s_m
> I’d have to offer my cooks $25.40 an hour to match what the government is
> paying them not to work.

So… why doesn't he offer them $25.40 an hour?

~~~
drcross
Why would you work instead of not working if you're getting the same money
anyway?

~~~
jld
It sounds like these companies have to account and compensate employees for
the risk they're asking them to take.

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.

------
wonderwonder
Summary: My furloughed employees refuse to take a pay cut and risk death so
that I can reopen my business and make money.

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?

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
One of the things I think that's interesting (a potential ticking time bomb)
about the "forgivable small business loans", is that they have to have their
payroll back to 100% and wages AT LEAST 80% by June for the money to be
forgiven.

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.

~~~
wonderwonder
honestly the entire country would have been better off with just giving every
adult in the US 2k a month for 6 months. Would have cost about 2.5 trillion.
Country could have been safely shut down, everyone would have been able to
cover their bills. When the country reopens, everyone would have money to burn
which would have flowed into businesses.

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.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
It's not quite that simple.

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.

~~~
wonderwonder
I do agree, but note I did say another 2 - 3 trillion in small business loans
/ grants. Is that enough? I am not sure, but I do agree that if not managed
correctly much like the housing crisis those with cash will swoop in and buy
the distressed businesses. I just don't see how what we are doing currently is
going to prevent that though. The white house is actively picking winners and
losers in the business world with almost no congressional oversight and has
fired the IG responsible for it.

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andymoe
The solution to this is super simple. Offer 600+n where n increases until they
agree to come back. Don’t have a viable business at those labor costs? Bummer.

~~~
toomuchtodo
"Employees better compensated by unemployment benefits than minimum wage that
hasn't been appropriately adjusted for inflation and cost of living by
Congress and states." would've been a more appropriate title, but not as
inflamatory.

~~~
taude
It's not just the unemployment benefits, though, people are getting an extra
$600/week ON TOP of their regular unemployment benefits. And that's what's
making this situation a little different.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Thanks for pointing out that traditional state unemployment benefits alone are
also insufficient for adequately cushioning citizens from job loss, and that
federal intervention was required. Otherwise, your state unemployment benefits
are going to be right around or somewhat above US poverty level guidelines for
an individual.

If you want people to stay home to not exacerbate a pandemic, you pay them to
stay home.

