#workers got the terms they were asking for without having to forgo work and pay to do it

[killldeer]

UPS WORKERS HAVE REACHED A DEAL THAT MEETS THEIR DEMANDS AND AVERTED A STRIKE!!!

EDIT 7/27/23: please reblog this version of the post instead! it provides a fuller picture of what’s going on and explains why this isn’t over yet.

[mooneec]

The Parentified Child: How It Contributes to a Depressed, Angry, and Resentful Adult

Were You a Parentified Child?

When you were a child, did your mom or dad turn to you for comfort and advice when they were struggling with problems at work, in their marriage, or with finances?

Did you share a special bond with that parent because you were their confidant and caretaker?

Did you forgo hanging out with friends, joining teams and clubs, and just being a kid because you were busy attending to your parent?

Do you now feel resentful because you missed out on a happy, carefree childhood?

If responding “yes” to these questions, you were a parentified child. As a result, you may be struggling in adulthood with sadness, anger, and depression. Don't give up hope, though, because recognizing the root of your problem gives you an opportunity to heal. You can find ways to make up for the joy you missed as a kid.

What Does It Mean to Be Parentified Child?

Parentification happens when a child switches roles with her mom, dad, or both, becoming the caretaker in the relationship. She may become this in an emotional way—listening to the parent's problems, giving them comfort, and offering advice. She may also do it in a physical way—cleaning the house, taking care of siblings, making meals, and even paying bills. Youngsters often become parentified when mom or dad is an alcoholic, a drug user, disabled, divorced, or mentally ill.

How I Became a Parentified Child at the Age of 12

My parents' marriage started to fall apart when I was 12. My mother suspected my father was having an affair with a woman at work. She and I would take hour-long walks every afternoon when she'd confide in me her worries, criticize my father, and even talk divorce. I'd listen intently, flattered she was trusting me with these grownup matters and offering what advice I could. Even though I was just a kid with little experience in relationships, she'd compliment my wisdom, saying I would make an excellent psychologist some day. Listening to her problems and giving counsel was how I got her attention and validation.

As a kid, I didn't think too much about this dynamic between my mother and me that lasted until I went off to college. I was just happy to spend time with her and be her confidant. It wasn't until I became a mother myself that I realized how horribly wrong it was to burden me with these adult issues, turning me against my father and making me cynical about marriage. I began to understand how she used me and robbed me of my childhood. I also learned that what she did wasn't that uncommon and actually has a name: parentification.

Parentification Can Cause Long-Term Problems Including Depression, Isolation, and Anger

Dads and moms who parentify a child often don't realize they're doing something incredibly harmful. My mother was going through a midlife crisis at the time she turned to me for comfort and support. She was unhappy in her job and feeling lonely because my dad was working long hours and traveling for business. When people at my dad's office began gossiping about an affair between him and a much younger subordinate, she was understandably embarrassed and upset. It tapped into her deepest insecurities as a woman and wife and caused her to think and act irrationally at times.

Instead of seeing a therapist or talking to a friend, she turned to me in her time of need. This proved to be a critical mistake, forever damaging the relationship between my father and me and leading to severe problems later in my life. After focusing on my mother's inner world for so many years, I felt unworthy of any attention being directed at me. I didn't know how to advocate for my own needs and desires. The consequences of being a parentified child finally caught up with me as an adult when I struggled with depression, isolation, and anger.

Bethany Webster deals specifically with mother-daughter relationships in "When Shame Feels Mothering: the Tragedy of Parentified Daughters." She writes, "A daughter is being exploited when her mother gives her adult roles, such as surrogate spouse, best friend or therapist...When a daughter is asked to be an emotional prop for her mother, she is unable to rely on her mother enough to get her own developmental needs met." As a result, the daughter can grow up to be an emotionally stunted adult with little self-confidence.

Depression

It's not unusual for a parentified child to become a depressed grownup. I struggled with extreme sadness most of my adult life, taking anti-depressants to numb the pain and going to therapy to get at the root of my heartache. My life transformed when an astute doctor gave me an aha moment, explaining that I had been parentified as a youngster and was suffering because of it. Until that moment, I had never heard of parentification. Having a name for what I experienced as a kid made me feel much better.

During the six years I acted as my mother's emotional caretaker, a tremendous burden was put on my shoulders even though I didn't realize it at the time. I dealt with adult issues that I didn't understand—marital infidelity, a midlife crisis, jealousy, insecurity, and rage. I worried my parents would divorce. I worried we'd have to sell our home and move away from the neighborhood I loved. I worried about our financial outlook and how we'd cope without our dad. I worried how my younger siblings would be affected. I worried about my mother's emotional stability and how I could make her feel better.

My decades-long battle with depression finally ended when I mourned the loss of the happy, carefree childhood I never knew. Kati Morton, a licensed marriage and family therapist, says the grieving process is key to healing. She says it includes acknowledging that what happened to us was not okay coupled with the motivation to move forward.

I started to nurture the little girl inside of me who didn't get the love and attention she craved. I began to enjoy some of the fun and frivolous activities I wanted to do as a kid but was never given the chance: going to a circus, roller-skating in the park, visiting Disneyland, and even having a sleepover with some of my friends.

Isolation

A parentified child can also grow up to be a lonely and isolated adult. During my teen years, I desperately needed a parent to give me advice and listen to my concerns about friends, dating, school, teachers, homework, my hair, and my makeup. My mother, though, couldn't see beyond her own problems to help me. My father, knowing that I was now my mother's confidant, largely avoided me even though we lived under the same roof. I spent too many hours alone in my room, feeling sad and scared. Instead of having the normal adventures of a teen—going to football games, hanging out with friends, and joining clubs and teams—I stayed close at home, feeling responsible for my mother's well-being.

Some therapists even consider parentification a form of child neglect. Because the youngster misses out on basic childhood experiences, her development is seriously impeded. This was certainly true in my case. I didn't get to enjoy the fun and frivolous activities that shape a teen's life. My role as my mother's confidant and emotional caretaker set me apart from my peers. Because we didn't have shared experiences in common, we didn't have much to say to one another. I had few friends and no social life.

Anger

According to Maggie Olivares, a social worker who's dealt with many parentified kids, anger is another byproduct that comes from missing out on a carefree childhood. When they become adults, they look back on all those years when they had too much responsibility and not enough fun and are resentful and bitter. They struggle to maintain a relationship with the mom or dad who parentified them and may even choose to end it.

To this day, I have tremendous anger toward my mother for using me that way. It turned out that my father was never having an affair and it was all in my mom's head, triggered by her deep insecurity. When my dad and her grew closer again after years of being distant, she unceremoniously dumped me. I was no longer needed as her confidant and ally. My relationship with my dad had been annihilated years before that, and I was left with nothing.

Fortunately, I've forgiven my mother and moved on with my life, but I still find it difficult to trust people. In the back of my mind, I'm worried about being used again. I often see friendships as depleting rather than energizing. While my mother has apologized for talking badly to me about my dad, she certainly hasn't owned up to how she turned me into a parentified child and caused disastrous effects in my life.

Final Thoughts

If you were parentified like I was, missing out on a carefree childhood, it's easy to spend your adult life feeling sad and resentful. In Bad Childhood, Good Life, the author encourages us to understand how our past affects our present but discourages us from making it our identity. Just because we were parentified as kids doesn't mean we have to wear the badge of perpetual victim. We can put our early years in perspective and move forward, knowing we're now in charge of our destinies. We can feel empowered and hopeful, building a happy and meaningful adult life even though we missed out on a lot during childhood. We deserve it.

[orbemnews]

Rescue Package Includes $86 Billion Bailout for Failing Pensions Tucked inside the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill that cleared the Senate on Saturday is an $86 billion aid package that has nothing to do with the pandemic. Rather, the $86 billion is a taxpayer bailout for about 185 union pension plans that are so close to collapse that without the rescue, more than a million retired truck drivers, retail clerks, builders and others could be forced to forgo retirement income. The bailout targets multiemployer pension plans, which bring groups of companies together with a union to provide guaranteed benefits. All told, about 1,400 of the plans cover about 10.7 million active and retired workers, often in fields like construction or entertainment where the workers move from job to job. As the work force ages, an alarming number of the plans are running out of money. The trend predated the pandemic and is a result of fading unions, serial bankruptcies and the misplaced hope that investment income would foot most of the bill so that employers and workers wouldn’t have to. Both the House and Senate stimulus measures would give the weakest plans enough money to pay hundreds of thousands of retirees — a number that will grow in the future — their full pensions for the next 30 years. The provision does not require the plans to pay back the bailout, freeze accruals or to end the practices that led to their current distress, which means their troubles could recur. Nor does it explain what will happen when the taxpayer money runs out 30 years from now. Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio who has been leading the charge to rescue the ailing pension plans, said that including the provision in the relief bill is a “really big deal” for both the retirees who depend on the money and the employers now being crushed by promises they cannot afford to keep. “It goes back to the fact that these workers didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Brown said in an interview on Thursday. “They have earned these pensions.” He added that the pandemic had worsened the crisis facing the plans. The measure has received criticism, with some experts calling it a Band-Aid. “Imagine that you have a college-aged kid who runs up $1,500 in credit card debt,” said James P. Naughton, an actuary now teaching at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. “If you give him $1,500 dollars and you don’t do anything else, the odds that the problem is going to get fixed are pretty low.” At the same time, Republicans assailed it as a union handout masquerading as pandemic relief. They have tried to turn the provision, which would benefit only union workers and retirees, into a political liability for Democrats. “Just to show you how bad this bill is, there’s more money in this to bail out union pension funds than all the money combined for vaccine distribution and testing,” Senator Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican, said last week. On Friday, Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, introduced his own legislative proposal for the failing pension plans, which he said would bring structural reforms to make them solvent over the long term. He called the measure put forth by Democrats “a blank check” and tried to have it sent back to the Senate Finance Committee for retooling. Biden’s Stimulus Plan Updated  March 6, 2021, 1:58 p.m. ET “Not only is their plan totally unrelated to the pandemic, but it also does nothing to address the root cause of the problem,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement. His motion failed in a vote of 49 to 50. Using taxpayer dollars to bail out pension plans is almost unheard-of. Previous proposals to rescue the dying multiemployer plans called for the Treasury to make them 30-year loans, not send them no-strings-attached cash. Other efforts have called for the plans to cut some people’s benefits to conserve their dwindling money — such as widow’s pensions, early retirement subsidies and pensions promised by companies that subsequently left their pools. The federal government does provide a backstop for certain failing pension plans through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which acts like an insurer and makes companies pay premiums, but does not get taxpayer dollars. Currently, the pension agency has separate insurance programs for single-employer and multiemployer pensions. The single-employer program is in good shape, but the multiemployer program is fragile. As of 2017, the country’s 1,400 or so multiemployer pension plans had a total shortfall of $673 billion. One huge Teamster plan, in particular, is expected to go broke in 2025, and when the pension agency starts paying pensions to its nearly 200,000 retirees, its multiemployer insurance program will go broke, too, according to the agency itself. That would leave the roughly 80,000 other union retirees whose pensions the agency now pays without their payouts. The new legislation changes that. It calls for the Treasury to set up an $86 billion fund at the pension agency, using general revenues. The agency would be required to keep the money separate from the funds it uses for normal operations. It would use the new money to make grants to qualifying pension plans, allowing them to pay their retirees. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that 185 plans were likely to receive assistance, but as many as 336 might under certain circumstances. The grants are intended to pay the retirees their full pensions, a much better deal than the pension agency’s regular multiemployer pension insurance, which is limited by statute to $12,870 per year. Many retirees in the soon-to-be rescued plans have earned pensions greater than that. The taxpayer money will also be used to restore any pensions that were cut in a 2014 initiative that tried to revive troubled plans by trimming certain people’s pensions. The stimulus bills — there is a House version and a Senate version that have minor differences — call for the affected retirees to get whatever money was withheld over the past six years. The legislation requires the troubled plans to keep their grant money in investment-grade bonds, and bars them from commingling it with their other resources. But beyond that, the bill would not change the funds’ investment strategies, which are widely seen as a cause of their trouble. For decades, multiemployer pensions were said to be safe because the participating companies all backstopped each other. If one company went under, the others had to cover the orphaned retirees. Because they were considered so safe, multiemployer pensions never got much oversight. While companies that run their pension plans solo must follow strict federal funding rules, multiemployer plans do not have to. Instead, the companies and unions hammer out their own funding rules in collective bargaining. Both sides want to keep the contributions low — the employers to reduce labor costs, and the unions to free up more money for current wages. As a result, many of the plans have gone for years promising benefits without setting aside enough money to pay for them. In hopes of making up for the low contributions, the plans often invest unduly aggressively for their workers’ advancing age. In bear markets they lose a lot of money, and they can’t ask the employers to chip in more because the employers are often struggling themselves. The new legislation does nothing to change that dynamic. “These plans are uniquely unable to raise their contributions,” said Mr. Naughton, whose clients included multiemployer plans when he was a practicing actuary. “When things go well, the participants get the benefits. If things go badly, they turn to the government to make it work.” Source link Orbem News #bailout #Billion #Failing #includes #Package #Pensions #Rescue

[elizabethcariasa]

April 15 Tax Day deadline and delay Q&A

Our world has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic, but we're still trying to hold on to some semblance of normal life. One of those life constants this time of year is taxes.

Yesterday, March 17, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin joined a coronavirus update press conference to announce how our tax lives are going to change this filing season. He said that people would be given three months to pay any taxes they found they owe when they complete their 2019 tax returns.

That pushes back and checks you have to send to the Internal Revenue Service from April 15 to July 15.

But as usually happens when taxes are involved, one tax answer tends to lead to more questions. Here are some that came to my mind.

Is April 15 still the filing deadline? Yes. Despite some early reports that the filing deadline had been delayed, consensus in the tax world is that Mnuchin's announcement did not move the tax filing deadline.

In fact, aside from making necessary coronavirus personnel and in-office changes like every other business right now, the IRS is operating as normal as possible. Returns are still being processed. If you're getting a refund, it will be delivered.

Part of that normal process is filing delays. So if you can't finish filling out your Form 1040, then file, as usual, for an extension using Form 4868. You can do so electronically, although that might need to be tweaked, too, since it usually is connected to paying any tax you owe. (There are always some unintended consequences with taxes.) Or you can download the paper form and snail mail it by April 15.

And those tax filing-tax paying entanglements bring us to the big April 15 change and question #2.

Is April 15 still the tax paying deadline? Yes. No. Not necessarily. Since the IRS is still running as sort-of usual, Uncle Sam would like folks who can afford to pay any tax they owe to do so by April 15 when they file returns. But if you can't pay, you now have until July 15 to send the money to the IRS.

Even better, you don't have to worry about the usual penalty and interest charges. Those will be waived for most filers who use the 90-day payment extension.

You said "most get to delay paying." Who is most? The tax payment delay is available to people who owe $1 million or less and corporations that owe $10 million or less, according to Mnuchin. Most of us individual filers will fall well below that million-dollar mark, but it was set at that level to accommodate small businesses that operate as pass-through entities. You probably remember discussion of these businesses during the (TCJA) debate. Pass-through companies are those whose earnings are reported as part of the owners' personal Form 1040 filings.

Or, as Mnuchin said during a March 11 hearing before the House Appropriations Committee when he gave lawmakers a preview of the Tax Day plan, the postponement is designed to help small and midsize businesses and "hardworking individuals" dealing with fallout from the coronavirus. The ability to postpone those payments without fear of added late charges would be provided to "virtually all Americans other than the superrich."

What does the delay really mean to taxpayers who owe? It means you get to keep the amount of money you normally — I know, I keep using that word while we are so far beyond normal right now… — would send to the IRS when you filed your tax return. That gives you the cash to buy groceries and pay bills.

Overall, according to Mnuchin, the delayed tax payments could provide $300 billion in temporary liquidity for U.S. households and businesses, up from the $200 billion estimate he told the House budget hearing last week. And that should provide a short-term financial cushion against this unexpected and rapid economic slowdown and government-ordered closures.

Quick side note about using your not-due-yet tax money. If push comes to shove, pay your utilities, not your credit cards. Those companies should be taking into account these extraordinary times and providing some consumer relief, too.

I got a notice this week from my card issuer saying it will work with folks who've been impacted by COVID-19, by offering such things as credit line increases and collection forbearance. If you don't hear from your credit card company and need help, contact it yourself and explain your situation.

What about other tax deadlines? April 15 is the biggest Tax Day for most Americans. And it's the deadline for not only paying, but other taxes and tax-related moves. This includes the first estimated tax payment for 2020 that's due on April 15, as well as the ability to put money into tax-favored health savings accounts and IRAs. Right now, it's unclear as to how or if these other April 15 deadlines are affected by the 90-day payment delay.

Will the same payment delay apply to my state taxes? Most of the 43 states and District of Columbia where some sort of income tax is collected tend to follow the IRS when it comes to things like filing deadlines. When that's been changed in the past, these state tax departments tended to follow.

But payments are different. Many states were facing budget difficulties before they, too, saw their economies whacked by the coronavirus outbreak. So they might not be as willing or able to forgo revenue collection even for a relatively brief period.

My best advice here is to pay attention to your local news and periodically check in with your state tax officials. You can find links to those state tax websites in the ol' blog's state tax directory.

What would the delay mean to the federal government? I know that most of us aren't really worried about the IRS in this time of coronavirus. But it is a question worth asking. As with most things tax, the answer is, you guessed it, it depends.

For the IRS itself, the delay could help the agency cope with the added stressor that the pandemic has created. The most immediately result would be the spreading out the agency's processing of payments. That's not a bad thing, since many of its workers are likely to move, where possible, to telework. And just like the rest of the population, some IRS employees will test positive for coronavirus or get sick and miss work. The delay could help ease these logistical problems.

As for Uncle Sam's bank account, the news isn't good. Our tax system is pay as you earn, meaning the Treasury collects our income taxes when we get our money. That's done by taking it out of paychecks of employees. Similarly, self-employed workers figure their income and payroll tax amounts and remit them in the aforementioned quarterly estimated tax payments.

When wage workers don't have enough income tax withheld or the self-employed are short on their estimated payments, they make up the difference with the taxes due when they file. And when folks know they'll owe, they tend to put off that filing and paying until the April 15 due date. That's why April typically is the IRS' biggest month for tax collections. Without that inflow, Treasury might be forced to borrow more to make up this year's tax payment delay shortfall.

When will we know more? Soon, I hope. The IRS is expected to issue more complete guidance on the general 90-day payment deferral. That should answer these and other questions.

When that happens, I'll let you know.

And if you have other questions about the April 15 changes, let me know in the comments and I'll try to track down those answers, too.

Until then, hang in there. Stay safe. And remember that while taxes are important, they are not as important as those we love. Take care of them and yourselves.

You also might find these items of interest:

Businesses get tax relief in House-passed coronavirus bill

Tax Day still is (for now) April 15, but IRS has new coronavirus tax webpage

Is delaying the April 15 tax deadline a good way to deal with coronavirus?

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[instantdeerlover]

America’s Independent Restaurants Struggle to Provide Sick Leave. That’s Got to Change. added to Google Docs

America’s Independent Restaurants Struggle to Provide Sick Leave. That’s Got to Change.

 Shuttertstock

With tight margins, few extra staff members, and a legacy of overwork, restaurants are at a crossroads when it comes to navigating a health crisis

Levi Raines has never called in sick to work. The 2019 Eater Young Gun, and chef and partner at Bywater American Bistro in New Orleans, says, “I’ve always taken my personal responsibility to my roles very seriously,” and part of that, for him, means showing up. Now that he’s in charge, he says he’d bend over backward to make sure someone’s shift was covered if they had to call out — but the small-business model doesn’t put him in the position to offer anything more like paid time off, extra shifts later to make up for the time, or health insurance.

In many cases, that blunts Raines’s efforts to support his employees. On Twitter, food writer (and Eater contributor) Tove Danovich recalled from her restaurant work days that “it was so normal to work while sick that once I threw up multiple times during my shift then cheerily went right back to greeting guests afterward. … As long as people need to get their shifts covered and don’t have paid time off, they’ll work.”

Every day — and particularly as COVID-19 spreads around the United States — experts underscore the importance of workers staying home when sick. But that means forgoing much-needed wages, and many workers can’t afford to miss a single shift, not to mention the 14 days of self-quarantine suggested for COVID-19. Even among the 25 percent of restaurant workers in places where local law entitles them to paid sick leave in some form, various regulations and loopholes mean that not everybody is eligible, aware, and employed by someone who adheres to the rules.

How Sick Leave Works in Restaurants

Seattle restaurateur Tamara Murphy of Terra Plata started out cooking in New York City’s fine dining scene three decades ago. “You got a daily rate,” she recalls, for working lunch and dinner six days a week. “If you didn’t want to do it, there were 12 other people in line behind you that minute who would take your job.”

In 2009, the then-fifth-ranked restaurant in the world, England’s the Fat Duck, sickened more than 500 diners with norovirus over six weeks. When the journal Epidemiology and Infection published its investigation, it assigned much of the blame for the size of the outbreak (the largest commercial restaurant-associated one in published literature) to workers coming in while sick. The structure of single-unit or smaller restaurant groups, combined with an often-toxic working culture that pressures employees to show up no matter what, cooks up a recipe for spreading infectious diseases.

“Obviously, we’re all ServSafe certified, and we know that we’re not supposed to work in certain circumstances,” says Raines. The loophole, he says, is that if you don’t have health insurance — as is the case for many workers at America’s independent small restaurants — you don’t go to the doctor, and then “you never know if it’s just a common cold or if it’s contagious or something you need to stay out of work for.”

But while discussions with restaurateurs about sick leave often tend to focus on the severity — or factuality — of the sickness (“If you’re sick, stay home. If you’re hungover, get your ass in,” says Murphy), hourly employees have to do the potentially infectious calculus of figuring out how sick they are versus how much of their wage they can stand to lose, not to mention how being absent will affect their relationship with coworkers who now have to pick up the slack, and with a boss who might doubt their level of illness.

“Employees shouldn’t have to choose between rent and being safe,” says Linda Addy of HR Annie Consulting, who works with restaurant groups like Kachka and Submarine (Ava Gene’s, Tusk, Lovely Rita) in Portland, Oregon, and previously was a server, general manager, and restaurant owner. She leans on restaurant owners to take responsibility for keeping their staff healthy. “If you can’t afford to pay them [for sick leave],” she says, “let them stay home or you will end up with three that are sick.” Even if that means paying overtime or working yourself, she stresses, “give them time to recover.” She suggests that smaller restaurants with a younger, broker workforce consider looking into alternative benefits that might be helpful without presenting as big of a financial burden as health insurance, including telehealth plans, which give employees a free, convenient, and fast way to get basic health advice. She also points to more affordable employee assistance programs that might cover telehealth (as well as therapy, and financial advising) for as little as $10 an employee each month, or stipends like $50 a month toward Zoomcare. Even as a small restaurant, and especially with tight employment markets, “You can stand out as an employer who cares” she says.

There’s a Staffing Issue, Too

But the pressure on ill employees to show up goes beyond immediate financial impacts. Recently, Raines’s morning sous chef had to leave town for a family emergency, so Raines has been working from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. covering shifts. “We have no extra bodies anywhere,” he says.

Unlike in some jobs, where tasks can be triaged or delayed, restaurants often run on the bare-minimum number of employees necessary, and almost everything needs to be done in-person, on-site, and for a specific duration. “You can’t ask a table of four to postpone until next week or Skype a meal,” pointed out Nick Zukin, owner of Portland, Oregon’s Mi Mero Mole, on Twitter. “The work has to be done whether an employee shows up or not.”

At many restaurants, the burden of finding someone to replace a sick employee falls on the sick employee themself, an onerous task that requires relying on available and helpful coworkers (and which is explicitly not legal in some places, such as Philadelphia). “But often there’s no one to cover,” says Zukin. “And so the employee doses on Dayquil and works.” Or, if they don’t, he describes a situation where one of three servers calls out, forcing each of the other two to do 50 percent more work than normal to keep things moving. The result is slower, worse service, harming the restaurant because of the diner’s subpar experience and the remaining staff members, who are not only unhappy from being overworked, but may now be more vulnerable to illness.

The sick employee, even if they’re told it’s acceptable to call in sick, knows all this. And if a worker is available to cover the shift, they may end up earning overtime wages, making that shift significantly more expensive for the restaurant.

By the summer, Murphy will open her next restaurant, La Limena. She is trying a new staffing model that will allow her to work with fewer people and have more resources for when back-up is needed by merging the front- and back-of-house duties. “It’s like I’m a defensive driver,” says Murphy, who recalls an employee strapping a kid too sick to go to daycare onto his back so he could make it in when no one else could take an opening shift. “I’ve had to make changes in staffing because I need them to be able to cover.”

Communication Is the First Line of Defense

While COVID-19’s long incubation period (up to and sometimes exceeding 14 days) has highlighted the lack of sick leave for hospitality industry employees, Zukin underscores that it’s a fundamental problem for an industry that operates on thin margins and depends on direct and timely service. “I can’t build in a buffer,” says Murphy.

It’s not the kind of problem that even larger businesses — which can afford emergency measures — can solve immediately, but it is one they need to start discussing. “People are talking about it anyway, so why not have a conversation and keep calm?” Murphy says. She goes right to the worst-case scenario: “Do you know what you would do if half your employees were out sick?” She suggests owners and managers make sure they have a clearly communicated plan for what employees should do both before and after falling ill. “I want to encourage employees to make good choices: Did you sleep? Take medicine?” The cost of hiring someone is about $4,000, she notes, while a few days of sick pay are a couple hundred (and, in the case of the flu, norovirus, and particularly COVID-19, could mean keeping the rest of your staff and your customers healthy). “I hope employers don’t think that if they don’t say anything, they’re saving money.”

Communication builds loyalty and engagement between the team and ownership through trust and transparency, Addy believes. Most individual restaurant owners “aren’t hiding big buckets of money,” she says, and by sharing some of the financial situation with employees rather than letting them assume that decisions are made because nobody cares about them, employees may be able to advocate for their own priorities, or make suggestions.

But even before that chat, Addy recommends that employees make sure they know their rights. Thirty-five localities around the country have sick leave laws, but they vary greatly in terms of who is eligible and, when they are, how much time they get, and what is covered. In Oregon, for example, until three consecutive days of sick leave are taken, the employer can’t question the reason for use. After that, they have the option to, but the law is generous and includes many interpretations of sickness: bereavement, illness in the family, mental health, and more. (Though Addy warns against abusing the privilege, noting that employers can’t withhold the sick pay, but if they have proof you skipped to go partying, “discipline can happen.”) If you do get sick leave, she recommends keeping an eye on your accrual of it: It may be printed on your paystub, but if not, employers should be able, and are sometimes required, to tell you how much sick leave you have at least once a quarter.

What Restaurants Need to Deal With Extenuating Circumstances

Under normal conditions, keeping a restaurant running and staffed begins with hiring people who will make good choices, say both Murphy and Raines. But under the current circumstances, the issue is far more dire than having a dependable team. Big companies have the capital and labor resources to suddenly enact sweeping policy changes: Following a Popular Information article about its lack of paid sick leave, Darden Restaurants Inc., employer of some 170,000 employees at its various holdings, including Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse, announced March 9 that it would offer paid sick leave and backdate accrual for 26 weeks. But few single-unit restaurants or small groups can make a similar move that quickly.

In Seattle, the first part of the U.S. to get hit by COVID-19, paid sick leave exists, but not for the full 14 days that someone might need to self quarantine. In addition, restaurants have already seen significant financial damage from people going out less, particularly restaurants with locations near businesses whose employees are working from home. “The rug has been pulled out from under us,” Murphy wrote on Facebook. “We are in triage mode.” Rather than find new ways to offer benefits, restaurants are just hoping to minimize how many people they have to lay off.

Without intervention and assistance, small businesses may barely be able to pay the employees who are working, not to mention those out for multiple weeks. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced measures that extend unemployment benefits to workers at businesses that need to shut down because of a sick employee and workers following guidance to quarantine. “The last thing people need to worry about when dealing with a health crisis is how they’re going to put food on the table,” said Suzi LeVine, commissioner of the Washington Employment Security Department.

These are temporary measures, in a single state, but they offer a glimpse at what could be possible in a country that recognized the economic value of supporting employees, and shows why so many restaurateurs and their workers have been so vocal in support of paid sick leave policies and better public health care options. For now, the status quo is closer to what James Mark, chef-owner of North in Providence, described in a tweet explaining his advocacy for Medicare for all: that the system creates “an uneven playing field that punishes employers that want to take care of workers.” It’s always been the problem, but the current situation has magnified the issue — and potential for harm.

The arrival of COVID-19 in the U.S. highlights the biggest failings of a system that leaves small business, like restaurants, and their workers to figure out how to make paid sick leave work with few resources and slim margins. Without overarching, nationwide, enforced paid sick leave policies, that positions restaurants to serve their entrees with a side of infectious disease. Industry workers will be the first to pay the price for these bad policies, but without big changes in both the immediate and long-term future, everyone will.

Naomi Tomky is a Seattle-based writer.

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/2020/3/11/21175138/how-restaurant-sick-leave-works-covering-shifts-paid-leave-policy

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