Congress and N.C. have left jobless workers in the lurch

As a restaurant owner and operator in North Carolina, I have seen how the COVID-19 pandemic has uniquely impacted our industry. This year’s challenges have made it necessary to keep our businesses closed for a time, adopt new ways of operating once we reopened, sustain drastically diminished revenue and reduce staff hours.

Other small business owners like me are doing everything we can in this unprecedented time to keep our businesses running, meet payroll and support the broader economic well-being of our communities.

We know that our employees’ financial stability and health are critical to that. We also know that workers across the state who have lost their jobs because of COVID-19 have just been hit with a preventable disruption to their ability to weather this public health and economic crisis. Their economic stability plays a critical role in the health of our economy.

The U.S. Senate’s inability to agree this summer to extend the federal $600/week in unemployment insurance has made it difficult for my still furloughed employees and for thousands across North Carolina who are out of work or have had their hours reduced. This has been the case since Aug. 1. Congress must act now to provide a supplement to our woefully inadequate state Unemployment Insurance benefits before this crisis turns into an even worse catastrophe.

North Carolina, along with the rest of the country, finds itself in one of the worst health crises and resulting economic downturns ever. Our state’s unemployed and underemployed workers now find themselves facing another crisis: trying to rely on a state unemployment insurance system that is simply inadequate to meet their basic needs.

This wasn’t always the case. Before 2013, North Carolina’s unemployment insurance program ranked in the middle of the nation in terms of the level of benefits provided. However, that year the NC General Assembly passed the most draconian cuts to North Carolina’s unemployment insurance system in the history of the program. Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment insurance reform had been long overdue. Now our workers are living week by week with the fallout of seven years of inaction by our lawmakers.

Congress must act to ensure that more than 400,000 workers in North Carolina have the support to make ends meet during this ongoing pandemic. Our state’s meager unemployment benefit, which averages at $227 a week, or $5.70 an hour, is simply too little. Can anyone claim that this is enough money to live on? In addition, the thousands of workers who are or have been on the job at reduced hours find it nearly impossible to access unemployment insurance benefits because of certain eligibility restrictions and the state’s low benefit amounts. They are unable to find any way to compensate for their reduced hours.

When the General Assembly convenes next month, legislators must act to fix a broken system. While unemployment insurance taxes for employers like me are some of the lowest in the country, workers in North Carolina, because of the 2013 cuts, receive some of the lowest benefits in the nation and are exhausting benefits at the highest rate in the United States. This is nothing to be proud of, especially the fact that North Carolina leads the country in the fewest unemployed workers receiving unemployment insurance benefits.

We are in the midst of the holiday season and my staff and thousands of workers across the state must receive assistance from lawmakers in Washington and Raleigh to get to the other side of this pandemic. As we face the colder months and rising COVID rates, I’m terrified of having to lay off more people and rely on grossly inadequate assistance. My employees are hard workers who take pride in their jobs. They want to work and progress in the careers they have dedicated years to. It is of no fault of their own or mine that they are unable to make the wages they need. They deserve better.

Federal and state elected officials should do their jobs and put in place the policies that will support a strong, inclusive recovery.