Is it Time for Restaurant Employees to Return to Work?

This is a question every restaurant employee in Nebraska has been struggling with this weekend.  On Friday our Governor, Pete Ricketts, issued an order that allows restaurants to reopen on May 4.  I want to discuss it here, so if you're not from Nebraska or you really don't care about Nebraska restaurants or their employees, then this post isn't for you and you should move on to something more engaging like my post about pet bobcats.   

Before I start telling you what I think about this decision, I want to be honest and let you know that I currently do not work in the restaurant industry.  I did, however, spend many (30+) years in the industry as a chef and restaurant owner/operator.  I retired from it several years ago because I am older and no longer able to perform at my best in that environment.  I'm lucky enough to have another career path which has now landed me in the healthcare industry at the largest healthcare provider in Nebraska, which also happens to be one of the top organizations in the world for COVID-19 research and treatment.  My wife is still in the restaurant industry and she has been impacted by COVID-19.  I should also let you know that, although I generally don't agree with anything our Governor does, I think he has done a great job of leading our state through the COVID-19 pandemic up to this point.  Just so you know, those are the things that influence my perspective on this situation.

Nebraska restaurants have been closed by executive order for several weeks in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19 and to "flatten the curve."  (I'm not going to tell you what "flatten the curve" means because it has been explained in the news for weeks and if you don't know you can just Google it.)  This was, and still is, the guidance provided by the Center for Disease Control (CDC).  As of this morning, the CDC is still recommending that restaurants remain closed for dine-in business.  The Governor's order directly contradicts the guidance of the CDC and Nebraska's healthcare experts.

About a week ago the White House issued some guidance for reopening sectors of the economy using a phased approach.  The first phase required a two week downward trend in the number of new COVID-19 cases, sufficient available hospital capacity, and a target percentage of available ventilators on hand.  In Nebraska we have met some of these conditions, but our number of cases are still increasing.  We have still not reached our peak so we have not yet met the White House's decreasing cases criteria for Phase One reopening.  The numbers reported by the state do not match the actual numbers of diagnosed and treated COVID-19 cases, so we should regard the State of Nebraska's numbers with some doubt.

Restaurant closures due to COVID-19 have been devastating to Nebraska restaurants and their employees.  Some restaurants have responded by pivoting their business models to favor take-out and delivery, but this is no substitute for having paying customers actually in the restaurants spending money.  Many restaurants will not recover from this and it's unrealistic to say that they will.  If you are in the industry, you probably already know that most restaurants don't have the reserves to weather this event if it goes on for very long.  Believe me, I felt the pain of managing daily cash flow in my restaurants and I understand how hard this is.  I understand the impact of losing even one day's sales so what I say here is not just something I say lightly.

Governor Ricketts relaxed the requirements for filing unemployment claims so that restaurant employees impacted by the closure of their workplaces due to COVID-19 became a valid reason for receiving unemployment benefits.  This has been a great help to restaurant employees, especially when combined with federal COVID-19 assistance.  It is the difference between making ends meet and living on the street for many of them.  

If you're familiar with how unemployment insurance works from the employer's perspective, you know that the number of paid claims is one of the determining factors in a restaurant's cost of unemployment insurance.  More paid claims means a higher cost of insurance to the employer.  Governor Ricketts, through an executive order, exempted COVID-19 claims from this.  If a restaurant closes due to COVID-19 and all of that restaurant's employees file unemployment and collect it, then it doesn't affect the restaurant's insurance rates.  I applaud our Governor for his insightful decision in this regard.  This will be really important later in the post, so make a mental bookmark here.

One of the requirements for reopening would be for employees to wear masks, but there is no requirement for customers to do the same.  Obviously you can't require a customer to wear a mask when dining unless he/she is somehow able to consume food and drink through another bodily orifice, but that is a subject for a future post.  The bottom line here is that having restaurant employees wear masks protects customers from contracting COVID-19 from employees, but employees are not protected from contracting it from customers due to the nature of how this virus spreads.

In weekly COVID-19 status calls in our organization, our experts are saying that reopening businesses prematurely would likely result in an increase in COVID-19 cases and epidemiologists are advising that we don't do it yet.  It is simply not time, yet we are about to do it anyway.  Governor Ricketts has listened to these experts up to this point, so why is this the time to stop?  I'll let you form your own opinions, but I think this decision places a higher value on money and politics than on safety.  You can decide for yourself if you think money is more important than human lives.

I told you earlier to make a mental bookmark so I want to talk about that now.  The picture isn't pretty, but here it is.  Within an hour of the Governor's order to allow restaurants to reopen Friday, some restaurant employees received texts and emails from their employers  saying that their restaurants would be reopening by May 4 and if the employees didn't agree to show up for work and agree to a variable schedule they would be terminated for "job abandonment."  For unemployment claims this would effectively terminate any benefits being paid.  The employee could either return to work with a reduced schedule and lose any unemployment benefits or they would lose all benefits because they "abandoned" their jobs.  If these employers left their employees in a status of "laid off due to COVID-19" the employees would still be able to collect unemployment benefits with no financial impact to the employer.  If they change the employee's status to "job abandonment" it would have no financial advantage to the employer and would serve no purpose.  It would just be spiteful and the threat to do so would be nothing short of coercion.

Think about this for a minute.  These employers are effectively coercing their employees to return to a potentially deadly work environment or risk losing any financial safety nets the government is offering in response to COVID-19.  They are being told that returning to a work environment that could make them sick or kill them and their family is their only option.  I know what I think about this, but hopefully you can figure out that these employers are not only ethically challenged, but morally bankrupt.  

I'd like to say that these are inexperienced restaurateurs and they don't know better, but they are not.  One of the ones I know of that has done this has been around for 40 years and is proud to tell you that.  They should know better by now and if they don't then they certainly have deeper problems than how to reopen after COVID-19.

That should just about wrap up this post.  If you had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to say here, then I can sum it up by saying that it's not time to reopen restaurants in Omaha yet because our health experts tell us that.  Our Governor knows this, yet he's willing to put lives at risk doing so. Restaurants who think they can coerce their employees into coming back to an unsafe environment should be ashamed of themselves and deserve to remain closed indefinitely.