A SPA owner in Washington revealed her staff was mad she reinstated their salaries amid the coronavirus pandemic because unemployment paid them more. Jamie Black-Lewis, who runs two spas and got over $200,000 via the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), said her workers weren’t happy about the news. She received loans of $177,000 and $43,800 for […]
A SPA owner in Washington revealed her staff was mad she reinstated their salaries amid the coronavirus pandemic because unemployment paid them more.
Jamie Black-Lewis, who runs two spas and got over $200,000 via the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), said her workers weren’t happy about the news.
She received loans of $177,000 and $43,800 for Oasis Medspa & Salon in Woodinville and Amai Day Spa in Bothell under the $349 billion CARES Act to cover payroll and expenses.
Black-Lewis had to cut off her staffers in mid-March as the pandemic pummeled the country resulting in non-essential companies shuttering, Washington state lockdown, and millions of emergency stimulus checks.
She informed staffers they would be getting a paycheck again in a video meeting but the entrepreneur didn’t anticipate their negative reaction.
“It was a firestorm of hatred about the situation,” she told CNBC, explaining that her workers realized they would get more of a payout with unemployment benefits.
Even the well-paid workers weren’t impressed, she told the station.
“It’s a windfall they see coming,” Black-Lewis explained. “In their mind, I took it away.
“I couldn’t believe it. On what planet am I competing with unemployment?
“They were pissed I’d take this opportunity away from them to make more for my own selfish greed to pay rent.”
The billion-dollar relief package increased these weekly unemployment benefits for hard-hit recipients.
This added a flat rate of $600 a week to the typical benefits paid by the state on a weekly basis.
According to a national average cited by the House Ways and Means Committee, these replaced around 40 per cent of a person’s wages before the crisis struck.
People earning less of a wage usually could actually come out on top when it comes to COVID-19-related unemployment.
This comes to approximately $30 an hour in Washington, or roughly $62,000.
Spa wages can extend anywhere from $13.50 per hour to earning $60 per hour with many employees working 24 to 32 hour weeks.
The businesses affected by the crisis have a deadline of June 30 to rehire their laid-off or furloughed employees, according to the bill.
Black-Lewis said she is going to follow the protocol despite protestations from her irate staff members.
“They [may not have] the choice ultimately, but I don’t come out as the nice guy,” she said.
“Bad will has been cemented into the business because I took it away from them.”
“There’s a bad taste from it,” the spa owner added. “We’ll recover. But it’s just a bummer.”
A whopping 26 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits over the past five weeks amid mass layoffs, business closures, thousands of infections, and now, over 50,000 deaths.
The Labor Department confirmed about 4.4 million people filed for unemployment last week alone.
An explosion of 6.86 million applications occurred in late March, when many state governors had issued stay-at-home orders to mitigate the spread.
