March 22: KLM pilots
At a quarter to ten in the evening, the director of labor relations of the ministry sends an overview of the structure of the scheme. Whether the minister can make a number of decisions.
“Hi everyone, impressed again!” Koolmees wrote back half an hour later. One decision he made that day concerns the level of the salary that will be paid through the scheme: because should this scheme also subsidize higher salaries?
If you don’t, you run the risk of companies firing their high-income staff. KLM pilots are explicitly mentioned as an example. “It’s looking for the right limit,” the officials write.
That limit is set at 9538 euros gross per month. Twice the maximum that is set for normal unemployment benefits. The factor multiplied by is a political choice, the officials write. “I think high incomes at 2x are fine,” the minister writes back.
March 24: ‘easy please’
A dilemma presents itself. How do you determine how much lost revenue a company has? What should you compare the turnover in times of corona? This question is of great importance for beach bars, for example, which make the largest part of the turnover in the summer.
A variant had been devised, the most ‘pure method’, according to the officials, with which you could take seasonal influences into account in the calculation. “But complicated,” they wrote.
This was not possible in the second variant proposed by the officials, and which the minister ultimately opted for. In that method, the turnover was compared with the annual turnover of 2019, divided by four. Beach bars, ice cream makers and other entrepreneurs who made their turnover in a certain season were disadvantaged as a result. “Less pure, but simple,” the officials wrote.
“Simply please,” the minister wrote in the memo.
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