CNBC ran a story last Wednesday about Jamie Black-Lewis, owner of Sanctuary Medspa & Salon and Amai Day Spa in Washington state. The post detailed how Black-Lewis secured 2 loans through the new Income Protection Program, for $177,000 and $43,800, to keep her businesses afloat through the pandemic.
But according to the post, Black-Lewis’ workers were fuming when they heard the bright side. The factor? The money they were collecting through unemployment benefits was more than the earnings they earn working for Black-Lewis, due to an extra $600 each week that the federal government’s Coronavirus Help, Relief and Economic Stability Act provides.
Black-Lewis recounted the reaction as “a firestorm of hatred about the situation.” “They were pissed I ‘d take this opportunity away from them to make more for my own self-centered greed to pay lease,” she told the outlet. CNBC described the worker “bitterness” as “an unexpected consequence” of the $2.2 trillion relief bundle. It kept up the heading: “She got a forgivable loan. Her workers hate her for it.”
The story appeared to validate the suspicion that generous federal government advantages would turn prepared workers into lazy mooches on the dole.
The story priced estimate none of Black-Lewis’ workers, however HuffPost spoke to 3 of them. They all disputed the main story– that they resented Black-Lewis for securing the loans, and that they loaded “hatred” on her for it. Group messages from Black-Lewis herself to her employees undermine her own quotes. In messages prior to and after the CNBC story ran, she thanked them a lot for supporting her as she pursued the loans.
The workers said their portrayal was unreasonable and mortifying.
” It just makes us look terrible– greedy, money-hungry, self-centered, simply lazy. It’s very humiliating,” said one employee, who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing her job.
” I felt like I got typed the stomach,” stated another.
The spa dustup includes simply one manager and her 3 dozen or so workers, but it exposes a lot about the hard tradeoff facing some small company owners and their staff members across the country as the federal government uses help through different however overlapping programs. It also states plenty about the difficulties dealing with service workers in the worst recession because the Great Depression, in addition to the nasty politics of America’s social safeguard.
For when [employees] were earning money what they could live off of.
The workers HuffPost spoke with said many employees did stand to earn more on joblessness than on Black-Lewis’ payroll, due to their fairly low wages and the increased federal benefit. The fact was undoubtedly on their minds as Black-Lewis informed them they would be rehired– as it would be for any sentient individual with costs to pay. At the exact same time, there may have been employees who were ineligible for welfare for one reason or another. If so, Black-Lewis would have wished to get them back to work as soon as possible.
The three employees all described themselves as living “paycheck to paycheck” in typical times. The possibility of an additional couple of hundred dollars a week throughout a period of severe economic