Senate Is Furlough Unethical?

Is furlough ethical, or is it exploitative of the labor pool? And are those workers who return to the same company after furlough modern day scabs?

Those companies, like Macy's or Landry's, do not want to pay their workers during time of hardship. But they also do not want to spend money training new workers, so they put the current ones on furlough. The fact that it's a cost cutting measure at the expense of the labor pool seems exploitative, I would think.

I briefly discussed the topic with some friends and there was no unanimous opinion. Oddly enough, I spoke with two libertarian friends who also differed in opinion about it. One was all for it, insisting that workers need to put themselves in the shoes of the business owners and understand the need for furlough, whereas the other agreed that it is exploitative but that the workers who return are not similar to scabs.

 

I don't think returning after that is similar to being a scab, because unlike scabs you're not taking a job away from someone else. I don't blame anyone who returns to a job after being furloughed. But I also don't blame anyone who moves on.

Of course, I think more companies need to be like Disney, where the execs just all took massive paycuts so they could continue paying frontline workers who aren't even working.

 

But they are being paid.

Plenty of businesses simply terminated employment, leaving their employees without work and having to claim benefits from the state.
That is what is unethical. You shouldn't be allowed to just fire people like that.

 

I couldn't find info on this...what percentage are they being paid?

 

I think it depends on the business.

But government is supporting various businesses to pay up to 80% of salary.

 

Dare I ask about how the state(s) compensate workers for being put on furlough on the other side of the pond?

Here, the emergency law passed dictates that businesses have to pay at least 70% of the wages of people they put on furlough - they can pay more if they want / can afford to - and the state will compensate them to the last cent over those 70% of wages, within limits of 4.5 times the minimum wage; a dedicated platform has been put up to handle this, and either there is an administrative reply within 48 hours over the request to put an employee on furlough - it's a request, not up to the sole decision of the company - or the request is automatically accepted, meaning the employer will be compensated, if there's no administrative reply after 48 hours. If the request is rejected, the employer has to keep the employee on full pay.

In addition, there's a possibility to sollicit the state to fund training for their employees during the furlough, as long as it falls within the restrictions on gatherings (which are strict).

Terminating employment citing COVID-19 simply isn't legal here.

 

Furloughed workers are not being paid. They have to file for unemployment, just like if they were laid off. The only supposed benefit here is that they might be able to return to their old positions (though what happens is that management tends to play favorites here and weed out the people they didn't like).


I was listening to an NPR interview where they were interviewing people who'd been put on furlough by major retailers like Macy's. The guy being interviewed was obviously very disappointed because he always worked whenever they called, worked every holiday for them, etc. And now he's trying to learn new computer skills to make a career change and hopefully more income.

This person had all these years to learn new, more useful and higher-income-generating skills. But he's doing it now because he's been put on furlough. I think this is what Andrew Yang has been arguing for--a more adaptive labor pool. More responsive workers, etc. And the bigger politicians dismissed him as a doomsday nutjob.

 

The only real preexisting US program is Short Time Compensation, which will pay for a temporary reduction of hours to prevent layoffs - but not more than 40%, and they must be full time employees.

Just got reports that Disney World has laid off construction workers with no notice, that were working on the Star Wars hotel in Orlando.

 

Company workers or contractors?

 

That's the UK. The US I believe is a little different. I'm not 100% sure of what the federal support package is but I doubt it's much more than "Bootstraps people"

 

In this crisis many might not have work to go back to anyway, regardless of Furlough, if a business goes bust during the shutdown period.

 

That was going to be my question as well. If it's construction, I doubt they are actually Disney employees.

 

I think people often forget that Disney's workers are unionized and that Disney and the Cast Member Unions have been in constant negotiations for the past several weeks. I think that the union's efforts to keep cast members paid (though at substantially reduced income levels depending on employment type) are somehow coming off as positive (and perhaps undue?) public relations credit for Disney, as if the company was being organically altruistic and benevolent.

Sure, Disney is agreeing to pay, but this was never guaranteed, and the unions have to constantly negotiate new contracts with Disney about pay and insurance every couple weeks, as each agreed-upon contract has an expiration date of only a couple weeks (with fluctuating rates of pay, as well).

 

They're not. They use outside contractors and they've had to shut down all construction work due to this being non-essential construction. So they had little choice there. Their own workers are being paid though.

EDIT: I know that there are workers unions for Disney employees. But the company is still working with those unions, not shutting them out. And agreeing for all your VPs and up to take massive paycuts is a good thing to do that they didn't have to. And that most companies aren't doing yet.

 

Disney knows it needs to save money as much as possible.
It relies heavily on theme park income which is currently gone. As is a lot of merchandise sales with Disney stores shut.

Share prices for major companies are in freefall, Disney can't pay employees and executives full salary solely using Disney+ & Hulu revenue.
Cutting the high level salaries makes sense. It's not as if those people couldn't easily get by on 50% of the salary they normally get.
Disney could come out of this laughing if other big companies sink because they didn't take similar action.

 

Construction workers are employed by a semi-subsidiary of Disney, and expect to be laid off when a project ends. What was different this time was that they were apparently only told the day the park closed to not come back.

 

2 of my colleagues, physicians both, are furloughed right now. It was voluntary, and pay is not affected for us. Reason is that hospital census is extremely light right now, so we are resting ourselves ahead of the projected surge. Seems like a much better way to do it then some of the other industries out there.

 

They are legally required to meet with their employee unions. Isn't that part of the National Labor Relations Act?

I agree with this entirely. Large companies need to cut costs. What many are doing is laying off or furloughing frontline workers. However, there are obvious costs to be cut at the executive level. Continuing with the example of Disney, the CEO and board members can easily afford to survive on $25 million instead of $50 million apiece.

I think this is part of the reason for the backlash against the airline industry wanting a bailout again. Last time, as I understand it, they laid off workers and took bailout money largely in the form of grants. They continued paying their executives, some even receiving bonuses, and when the industry recovered to record-high profits, continued the same inexcusable mismanagement of their companies and finances that prompted them to the modern day, where they are back to asking the government for free money.

But this is all kind of a tangent to the topic of furlough being ethical, I suppose.

 

My husband was furloughed in '08 after the crash. He basically lost a day of pay per week for several months and didn't work that day. We had a baby and it wasn't easy, but we survived. Thank goodness we didn't have anything like this going on though.

 

Disney's CEO Bob Chapek is actually only paid $2 million and will be taking $1 million this year..a lot less than you'd think.

 

Iger is still running Disney until 2021. But I don't think that undermines the point that people can still survive on a million or millions. They don't need tens of millions to survive this comfortably.

EDIT:

I think if you wanted to pick a better example for a company doing "right," there's a much smaller Orlando theme park company to look at: Gatorland. It's locally/family owned and not a multi-billion dollar corporation. I do not think their employees are unionized, yet Gatorland is still paying everyone, though they have substantially less money to work with.

 

Ah forgot he was still at the helm for now. He took what, a 90% pay cut?

 

Iger is reportedly taking no salary at this time. But keep in mind that he's been repeatedly criticized by the Disney family for his excessive pay in the past. So I don't think this is as heroic as some people are making it out to be.

imo, this isn't dissimilar to President Trump promising to give away 100% of his president's salary. Both these guys are very well off. And in Disney's case, it's also good for the company to keep those funds since these are rough financial times.

Which furthers your point that other major corporations should probably consider doing likewise at the executive level.

 

Pretty sure Iger could live off interest on his accounts alone for a few years without any income.