1ºCNN I'm closing my restaurant and not due to financial constraints but rather the fact that after COVID we had to decide if we wanted to grow or just phase out as we were busier than ever. My health has taken a serious toll with the 14hrs shifts 6 days a week and this was the #1 reason to phase out. We also decided not to grow as hiring right now is near impossible in the industry and trust me... we pay very good our employees. Simply they have also moved and retrained to a less demanding and grueling job which in top of that is rigjt now at the height of customer entitlement.
2ºLet’s see if we can figure this one out.
Working retail means minimum wage pay, part time hours, no benefits and being treated as a necessary evil. When the pandemic hit, these people were the first to lose their jobs.
Now, retailers are complaining that expanded unemployment benefits is preventing employees from coming back to these garbage jobs? If you want to keep employees, you have to actually care about your employees. Give them a wage and benefits that makes them want to work for you. A mutual exchange of contempt between employer and employee is not how you build a successful worker relationship.
3ºRetail for many years...constantly asked to do more with less. Less staff, less hours, less pay and time off. Nights, weekends, holidays, no weekends off, schedule never the same so you can’t plan anything...be prepared to kiss a lot of family events. Oh you want a vacation? we have a corporate visit you can’t! People that work in corporate and have no idea of how a store works constantly telling you how to run your business and the. there’s the customers....some are nice, a lot of them aren’t, lots of scammers and thieves but we can’t stop or deter them. Never work retail unless desperate.
4ºThe Governor of Tennessee took the Federal unemployment away from Tennesseans, so they are forced to take these minimum wage jobs with no benefits. He literally took over 400 million in revenue away from his own state, to make a political statement. The only jobs available in Tennessee are these low paying jobs. People want to go back to work but it's impossible to support a family on what they are paying. My husband is being forced to take one of these jobs in the next two weeks when the unemployment expires. He went from earning $1,200 a week down to about $300 with no health insurance. We can't get health insurance through Medicare/Tenncare unless you have underage children. My husband can't go back to his career because he's diabetic and cannot pass a DOT physical with high blood sugar. he hasn't had insulin or heart medication in over a year. I don't know what people are going to do to survive.
5ºI've said this before and I'll just repeat - I know two people who worked in restaurants. $2.13 per hour + tips with ZERO benefits. While on shut-down, they both got jobs working at home for Amazon for customer service positions... $15 per hour (starting) with full benefits. WHY would they return to their old jobs? Same with retail - my cousin worked in retail (and I have in the past); almost daily horror stories dealing with the public. She also got an at-home job with a company doing her work virtually, and gets paid $2.50 an hour more per hour than her retail job, with slightly better benefits. Again, why should someone like her go back as well?
The pandemic did one thing - highlighted the VERY poor pay and benefits many Americans have at their jobs. We should use that info instead of trying to accuse every one of them of not working and staying at home collecting benefits - many of them just had the time to find BETTER jobs.