Whenever Congress gets around to the next pandemic stimulus bill, which should be sooner rather than later, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and other Democrats want essential workers — those who are continuing to make supply chains move and taking care of patients and driving our buses and shopping for your groceries and ringing you out at the grocery store and pharmacy and generally having to go out into the world while most of the world stays at home — to be compensated appropriately for the dangers they have taken on.
“Health care workers and all individuals who continue to report to work during this pandemic are frontline employees who deserve gratitude, protection, and support,” Senator Brown wrote in a March 31 letter to President Trump. “I am glad that your Administration recognizes the risks they face and sacrifices they make during this health emergency. I look forward to working with you to ensure employers provide the well-deserved Pandemic Premium Pay necessary to adequately compensate their frontline workers. And I urge you to immediately issue an Emergency Temporary Standard to protect these workers, their families, and the public from further spread of the coronavirus.”
In a call with national reporters yesterday, Senator Chuck Schumer elaborated on the plans Democrats are now eyeing: Up to $25,000 a year for those making below $200,000 by adding $13 an hour to wages that would date back to the start of the coronavirus spread.
“We are asking these workers to take on great risk. They should be compensated for it,” Schumer said, describing what he called the Heroes Fund. “For these Americans, working at home is not an option. Social distancing is not an option. They are in the line of fire day in and day out.”
The plan, which Dems say the federal government would pay for, although specifics totals were not available, would also offer $15,000 one-time payments to new hires in healthcare and emergency response.
Grocery stores such as Kroeger and Giant Eagle have either boosted employee wages or offered pandemic bonuses to workers who are depended upon to staff warehouses and counters and registers during the pandemic. Others have not, however.
This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2020.
“The plan, which Dems say the federal government would pay for….”
That is a lie. The federal government does not pay for anything. Taxpayers do. If we are going to discuss this idea, which isn’t bad, let’s discuss it honestly.
Did they do any of this stuff when other pandemics spread around the world?
Although it sounds nice, I think no1 should receive anything. It just digs a deeper hole. Let’s just go back to normal already. I don’t want more money for doing my job
So i work at a small groceries for $9/ hr,while other people get to party and act like stupid in my store while getting more then us ” essential workers ” do on unemployment.But i dont feel it is any different then hazard pay for military .Some people still just dont get it and still crowd us while working ,give us a safe place to work,thanks my grand children appreciate it.
By placing caps above which hazard pay will not be offered is ludicrous. This would essential eliminate physicians from receiving hazard—the very people actually taking care of covid patients. Im sorry, but the grocery store clerk is not being exposed to known covid patients on a daily basis. Many healthcare workers have already fallen ill and some have died.
James McGuire – The last global pandemic of this scale was in 1917 and 1918. I don’t believe there is a way to get an apples-to-apples comparison from such distant eras. But I am not saying that you asked a bad question, I think it was a good and reasonable question.
You think only docs and nurses should receive it as they are treating people? At least they know already who has it or could have it, the workers at the grocery stores getting shouted at all day by people who may or may not have it are just as bad if not worse, they are not protected! I dont work in the stores but I am in the food business and we go above and beyond to protect our staff, our brand and most importantly the community!
Chris Reidel, we had similar numbers during H1N1 and I don’t recall any of the current bailouts then. I’m not opposed to bailing out businesses ordered closed and enhanced unemployment.