Status: 05.06.2021 09:26 a.m.
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In the Corona crisis, the increased US unemployment benefits should save many from poverty. Now it makes badly paid jobs like in the hospitality industry less attractive. Anyone looking for staff has to rethink.
From Antje Passenheim,
ARD-Studio New York
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Diner boss Stavros Vouvoudakis no longer comes up before work. The clientele is growing again. But his team has shrunk in half since the pandemic. He doesn’t find new people. Since the native Greek arrived in New York 51 years ago, he has not seen anything like it. “I was 17 and grateful,” he says of the time. “If you work hard, you can become something here. This is the only country where you can be poor and get very rich.”
Antje Passenheim
ARD-Studio New York
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But no longer at any price. The old man points out the window. Its Midtown neighbors are teeming with signs: “Help Wanted”. We are urgently looking for: waiters, hostesses, cooks. Nobody wants the jobs.
Consequences of the Corona aid
The government, which generously paid unemployment benefits during the corona crisis, is to blame. And continue to do so until September. “You are spoiled,” says Vouvoudakis. “With the extra $ 300 a week, they don’t have to work. It’s unfair for the business people.”
Stavros Vouvoudakis sees the high unemployment benefits as the main reason why many restaurateurs in New York are currently looking in vain for staff.
Image: Antje Passenheim
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They paid a minimum wage of $ 15 in New York for a long time. But what many jobbers would have swallowed before the pandemic, they no longer accept, says economist Alan Detmeister from the Swiss bank UBS. “In the catering industry, where the lowest wages are paid, there have been increases of 60 percent in the last three months,” he says.
What unions have not achieved for decades, the pandemic could now do, says Daniel Zhao from the Glasdoor platform, which evaluates companies. “These increases are interesting because they signal that the business world is looking for long-term strategies to attract employees,” he says.
Corona break causes rethinking
Gabby Namm understands that. At 19, she started working in the kitchen of a taco place. Since then she has made her way as a cook. “You don’t earn much. You work around the clock,” she says. “You don’t get to think about what you could do differently and you don’t have enough money to build your own.”
It’s a hamster wheel in which one is trapped. Then came the paid Covid break. “I got more unemployment benefits than I earned in any job before,” says Gabby Namm. And finally she had time to think. “I thought: This is crazy. I am being exploited. Now I have to reevaluate what I actually want and how I can get ahead for myself.”
At Gabby Namm, the Corona break led to a rethink – and to the establishment of their own restaurant.
Image: Antje Passenheim
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“People are asking for more now”
She opened a pop-up restaurant with her husband. Filipino cuisine is served twice a week in “Sweet Angel Baby’s”. Cooking is done at home and sold in the open air. If they hire people soon, they should get more than the minimum wage, promises Gabby Namm: “People are asking more now. And that’s good.”
Lawrence White also welcomes this. The expert at New York University hopes that with the new beginning after Covid, some things will improve on the job market. For example, that employees are no longer so dependent on tips. There are already places in Manhattan that rely on other models. “The pandemic could have helped to rethink,” he says.
Nevertheless, White does not see a workers revolution. The catering industry is recovering rapidly right now. And in New York, with a good 300,000 jobs, it makes up almost eight percent of the workforce. Little will change in the long run. You will always find such individual stories, says White. But he doesn’t think that’s a common phenomenon.
Uncle Sam is now wearing donation trousers: New York restaurants vying for employees
Antje Passenheim, ARD New York, 4.6.2021 9:02 a.m.
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