Many of the federal
funding decisions being made are intended to resuscitate the Main Street
businesses left damaged by the pandemic. There is, however, a piece of the
recovery equation that only a company’s owner can address: When the business
gets the money, what does it do to get its furloughed employees back on the
payroll?
There’s reason to think
that might be more challenging than previously anticipated.
"The
spirit of the Paycheck Protection Program is to put people back on payroll.
What we’re trying to figure out: How exactly you pull that off," said
Tom Hoffman Jr., whose business runs Jiffy Lube and car-wash locations
in upstate New York. "Preparing a list of people with their average wage
over the last couple of months, how much should they be paid if they average 38
hours or 40 hours, and really how to communicate it, especially to the folks
who may be getting paid $1,000 a week between unemployment and the $600."
As part of
the $2.2 trillion federal CARES Act, states are allowed to include a $600
weekly increase in unemployment payments for up to four months, on top of state
benefits, for people who have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus.
"What
we'd really like to do is reopen," Hoffman said.
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