Federal unemployment compensation keeping people out of work.

[chefross]

Many places are struggling to reopen again and I have been seeing and hearing about owners who can't do that because their employees are comfortable making $400.00 a week in unemployment. They make more in unemployment then they would working a 55 hour week.
If the owner were to call the unemployment office and file a complaint, the employee would either have to go back to the job at their wage they were or lose benefits altogether.
I don't know about you, but that employee having to go back to work would not be a happy camper.

Has anybody here faced this situation?

 

[fatcook]

I wouldn't think anyone making less than 400 a week for 55 hours of work would be happy in the first place.

 

[chefwriter]

I think this is part of the larger societal discussion over what constitutes a living wage, why hedge fund managers and CEOs may not be worth their multi million dollar payouts, the $15 minimum wage, the rising cost of living and much more. We may be finally addressing the odd idea of the "working poor".
Technology has and is changing the way we work but as with other advances, it doesn't seem to change the compensation formulas. There are lots of questions needing answers.

 

[phatch]

Fast food in my area pays more than what Chefross proposes as do most retailers like Target or Costco.

If wages are as low as Chefross indicates for their area, then I could see what he claims as happening but I have no evidence of it as such. My state (Utah) actually had over 8% tax income increase in 2020 with all the effects of the pandemic so it doesn't have to be doom and gloom. That's the highest in the nation so it's not the normal result and most states had a reduction of some amount. There is high variability in the local economies it seems.

I do know that some of my favorite food places failed during the pandemic, like Empanada Express. The pandemic accelerated economic changes that would have played out over a decade into just a year. It's a very different playing field than a year ago I think.

 

[fatcook]

Yeah, this area has had some closures that were not covid related, some that were just sped up, and some that were unfortunate timing (just opened, so no reputation to help rally the customers, etc.). I'm not sure what this year did to the local labor market. This town has been a "worker's market" for several years due to being seen as a foodie place to come and open a restaurant, so the F&B labor pool had their choice of employment. We've had more eateries than the market could really support for quite a while now - the local paper runs a weekly opening and closing list, and it was long before the current crisis.

Our business has been crazy busy. Very much helped by being a take home food provider vs a restaurant. We had some new products that we were just about to roll out last spring that we've put on the back burner because we are too busy making the current line and running our small farmers market. The market has been busy also, and local foods are selling really well. We have farmers (both produce and meat / egg / dairy) and food makers, both are in demand.

Food trucks are also doing well around here just popping up in neighborhoods - people are tired of cooking and are happy to have options. They have lost some bigger events, but the smaller ones cost less (or are free) so they are keeping more of what they make. Though again, we have so many food trucks - the weather is good most of the year, and some people see it as a foot in the door to opening a restaurant (rents in this town are crazy high) so they come and go pretty quickly. The good ones stay around.

I honestly don't know where our state stands tax wise for 2020, but I do know they've stepped up harassing us for our sales taxes. We got a reminder for Feb's filing on the 28th. It used to be reminders went out a week after they were due (the 20th of the following month). Dang people, let us finish the month and do the math would you?

 

[phatch]

Idaho did better than utah actually

Virus Did Not Bring Financial Rout That Many States Feared

Grim forecasts held up for a few states, but many took in about as much tax revenue as before the pandemic — sometimes a lot more.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Iceman]

.




I can't live on $400 / week.

 

[chefross]

My comments were about my area here.
I have a friend that owns a bar and grill. Right as Covid was starting to take hold last year, she spent a great deal of money to redesign and furnish her place. Then when the virus shut her down, her employees filed for unemployment and have been getting it ever since. She does want to reopen but her employees make more money sitting at home than working for her.....The labor pool here offers nothing.
Now the government wants to send out more stimulus money. The solution is not handing out more money we don't have, but to open and allow commerce to return. It's the closings that are the issue. Hopefully as more and more people become vaccinated this will come true.

 

[halb]

Chief, $400/55hrs is $7.27 an hour before taxes.

As an employer I want to pay the least amount I can. Hey, I'm giving you a job!

As an employee I can't live on that unless I'm a teenager living at home. And at 55 hours a week there is no time for a second job.

You have to look at unemployment as your competitor. If you want to hire decent employees you have to top their "salary".

 

[francisbaud]

Yea the unemployment compensation is an issue here in Canada too, as people were receiving 2,000 CAD per month to stay at home, about the same than what a person with the minimum wage was getting by working. I wonder how the groceries and stores were incentivizing their employees to stay at work.

 

[chefbillyb]

It's Now $300 with this last vote in Congress. The whole thing is $300 per week added to the unemployment they already get. So if they get $250 per week thats really $550 per week. Most cooks don't make that.......If a Cook makes $15x40 hers= $600 gross. Take 15% for taxes is $510 take home....Why Work?????

 

[halb]

In NY it's $502 plus the $300. $802 per week.

 

[Transglutaminase]

Yea the unemployment compensation is an issue here in Canada too, as people were receiving 2,000 CAD per month to stay at home, about the same than what a person with the minimum wage was getting by working. I wonder how the groceries and stores were incentivizing their employees to stay at work.

Yes, the restaurants here in Vancouver are complaining that their employees aren't interested in coming back to work.
Stats show that two thirds of the CRB recipients are living at home ..with their 6 figure income parents.

 

[phaedrus]

Maybe this will be the 'come to Jesus' moment for the industry...well, the whole world actually. Tens if not hundreds of millions of people grind their bodies down day in day out for subsistence wages. Then everything came to a screaming halt. Now you have people making the same or even more than they made back when they were killing themselves trying to keep a nostril above water. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event for nearly everyone currently living, and it's plain to see why people would embrace the only easy living they've ever known. Eventually things will return to some semblance of normality and they'll go back to grinding down their bodies doing shit jobs again for subsistence wages. If that's what you're offering then you can't be surprised they're not pounding down your door to come back!

 

[Iceman]

NYC has a much higher cost of living.

In both of my restaurants and my pizza place (when I was doing that) I never lost an employee due to unhappiness of pay. I paid cash every Monday. My employees also had an investment account and a healthcare plan (just for them, NO family included). I was able to do the healthcare be personally negotiating with a handful of clinics around the restraints. The investment account was just a mutual fund where everyone's money went in. My point is is that I paid well and had employees for a long time.

A non-living wage is not something I can accept. I'd be happy to push every senator voting against $15/hr out in front of a bus. ​

 

[chefbillyb]

Iceman, Welcome to Mc Donalds how many $10 Happy Meals would you like from the animated ordering window. Would you like something from our economy $12 menu. Please be seated and your robot will deliver you meal soon.​

 

[phaedrus]

If McDonalds fires all their worker and replaces them with robots but raises the menu prices pretending it's to cover labor they fired, well, they should be burned down. The GAO has calculated that yeah, some jobs would be lost (less than 1M) but many more millions would be elevated out of poverty. At any rate the FUD being spread about min wage is largely bullshit. I live in a little town in Montana; the McD's here pays $12+ and hour and they have no robot butlers nor $12 Dollar Menu. In the last five years the Dollar Menu morphed into a $1.50 menu yet the republic endures.

We're all collectively okay with our tax money going to ag subsidies so fast food places can sell a burger cheaper than the cost of raising the beef. Maybe we all can figure out a system where a person working 70+ hours per week at two shit jobs can afford rent.

Obviously it's not the 'fault' of restaurant owners; they just have to work within an utterly broken system. But we don't have to just throw our hands up and say, "oh well, guess that's just how it has to be."

 

[chefross]

The one theme that keeps getting repeated over and over again ad nauseum is that minimum wage jobs are not for making a living. They are for the young just starting out in the job world.
Somehow it is THAT that should change.

 

[halb]

...minimum wage jobs are not for making a living. They are for the young just starting out in the job world.

Sounds like age discrimination to me.

 

[chefbillyb]

Sounds like age discrimination to me.

Or just the truth.....