New Coronavirus - COVID-19

[JSH]

Well we have seen the first real effects from COVID 19. My wife’s company just had an all staff meeting to announce the company’s COVID 19 “Stimulus” plan. It took an hour to say what could be said in 1 minute. No bonuses this year and company wide pay cuts on a sliding scale from 0-25%. People making less than $65K have no cut and it progressively increases from there. No slow down or reduction in hours. They didn’t let any contractors go and they keep their full pay.

How brain dead do you have to be to call a pay cut a “stimulus”?

We will be fine and a sliding scale makes a lot of sense. However nobody is happy that the company decided to cut employee pay before letting the contractors go.

[Fat Charlie]

I put my guys on a rotation of mostly half days a few weeks ago, but things got even slower. I had to lay one of them off today. I really hope Washington's unemployment boost hits soon.

[freebeard]

They called it brain cancer for his family's sake.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by JSH

Well we have seen the first real effects from COVID 19. My wife’s company just had an all staff meeting to announce the company’s COVID 19 “Stimulus” plan. It took an hour to say what could be said in 1 minute. No bonuses this year and company wide pay cuts on a sliding scale from 0-25%. People making less than $65K have no cut and it progressively increases from there. No slow down or reduction in hours. They didn’t let any contractors go and they keep their full pay.

How brain dead do you have to be to call a pay cut a “stimulus”?

We will be fine and a sliding scale makes a lot of sense. However nobody is happy that the company decided to cut employee pay before letting the contractors go.

Maybe the contractors are essential, or they have contracts that are expensive to break (or perhaps neither is true and they should have been cut)?

I think it was back in 2008 or 2009 the factory I worked at furloughed everyone for 2 weeks at 2 different times during the year rather than lay people off. Seemed the right thing to do in my view, especially since it retains those people for when production capacity needed to ramp back up. No need to train new people.

Once I had a boss say "good news"! You all are getting a raise. The catch was that we were losing our quarterly bonuses, and the raise didn't kick in until the follow year. So the first year, we all effectively got a pay cut, the second year we were back up to our previous pay, and the 3rd year we got a 4% raise, which probably just covered inflation for that year. He was a salesman, so he could keep a straight face while delivering the good news. Meanwhile, we all knew how to do math. He stuck to his guns (it's a raise), we stuck to ours (it's a pay decrease).

The owner has the right to change the terms of employment including canning me, and I have the right to walk away (I did once, but was given a 25% pay increase to stay). I consider it a fair arrangement.

[oil pan 4]

This feels like the bullspit virus. Wasn't even bad enough to make any real opportunity. Just bad enough to really hurt people who build their lives around living paycheck to paycheck.
I say try to keep the virus going through the summer to get herd immunity up before fall but not bad enough to over run hospitals or make the news.
If we do this all or nothing fight, we will just about stomp it out, think we won then it will roar back in the fall and be right back were we were a few weeks ago.

Originally Posted by JSH

Well we have seen the first real effects from COVID 19. My wife’s company just had an all staff meeting to announce the company’s COVID 19 “Stimulus” plan. It took an hour to say what could be said in 1 minute. No bonuses this year and company wide pay cuts on a sliding scale from 0-25%. People making less than $65K have no cut and it progressively increases from there. No slow down or reduction in hours. They didn’t let any contractors go and they keep their full pay.

How brain dead do you have to be to call a pay cut a “stimulus”?

We will be fine and a sliding scale makes a lot of sense. However nobody is happy that the company decided to cut employee pay before letting the contractors go.

Its a stimulus for the bottom line and the share holders.
The contractors are under contract and if the company want to reneg, problem is they likely agreed beforehand to brutal reneg and cancelation fees. For example, the contractors have likely already been paid, the contractors would love to be let go with all that money in their pocket free to find another gig.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

The contractors are under contract and if the company want to reneg, problem is they likely agreed beforehand to brutal reneg and cancelation fees. For example, the contractors have likely already been paid, the contractors would love to be let go with all that money in their pocket free to find another gig.

There are no reneg clauses. My wife is pretty close with several of them.

This isn't a real contract were they are hired to do a specific task. They are just hired under contract so the company can pay a straight hourly wage on a 1099 without benefits.

[Xist]

I am going to continue teletherapy as long as possible even though I miss plenty of my kids. I have long feared that as soon as I let down my guard and tentatively start readjusting Mom or one of my kids will get sick.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by freebeard

They called it brain cancer for his family's sake.

There is something seriously wrong with you.

I do not know about that picture, but this one was in the New York Times:

The rumors are based partly on images of a Syrian fighter who resembles Mr. Baghdadi, seen in photographs with Mr. McCain

The man who was misidentified as Mr. Baghdadi in the photographs, Mr. Rogers said Thursday, was a commander of the Northern Storm Brigade, a group linked to the Free Syrian Army. Mr. Rogers declined to identify him by name, saying he feared for the man’s safety.

Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Washington-based group that helped to arrange the senator’s visit, said all of the people who appeared in those photographs were at risk. When ISIS published the first issue of its magazine, Mr. Moustafa said, it featured one of the photographs and proclaimed, “We have to cut all these people’s heads off.”

Here is a picture of Baghdadi posted by Business Insider in early 2015:

https://www.businessinsider.com/abu-...on-file-2015-2

That isn't the same man!

Abu Mosa?
This is the only picture that I can find, also from Business Insider, but from 2014:

https://www.businessinsider.com/abu-mosa-killed-2014-8

That isn't the same man, either!

That was Salim Idris in the picture and he was in the Free Syrian Army, which was fighting a dictator guilty of war crimes. I have not read anything good about Assad or bad about the FSA.

That is Mouaz Moustafa in the picture. He was part of a PBS article about a refuge camp: Most aid to Syria’s Rukban camp has been blocked for more than a year. Here’s why

This was part of what he said during one of his appearances on C-SPAN:

I want to thank the council for having me. It is an honor to be on such a distinguished panel. Everyone should read this work by Anne about the detention in Syria. It has always been, for Syrian people, something that was not a secret, before the uprising, it was a tool to go after political opposition, activists. As the uprising happened, thousands and thousands of civilians were arrested. As the checkpoints popped up around the country during the war, as the war became more violent and complex, it became easy for anyone stop today check point to be taken. You didn't have to have done anything, you didn't have to act against the government, you could have just had the wrong name, been from the wrong neighborhood. The militia members, the security officers at the checkpoints could have had a bad day. That was good enough for you to be taken.

Political Imprisonment

What is the problem with him?

[freebeard]

The man who was misidentified as Mr. Baghdadi in the photographs, Mr. Rogers said Thursday, was a commander of the Northern Storm Brigade, a group linked to the Free Syrian Army. Mr. Rogers declined to identify him by name, saying he feared for the man’s safety.

But what about the others? Abu Mosa included.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by JSH

Well we have seen the first real effects from COVID 19. My wife’s company just had an all staff meeting to announce the company’s COVID 19 “Stimulus” plan. It took an hour to say what could be said in 1 minute. No bonuses this year and company wide pay cuts on a sliding scale from 0-25%. People making less than $65K have no cut and it progressively increases from there. No slow down or reduction in hours. They didn’t let any contractors go and they keep their full pay.

How brain dead do you have to be to call a pay cut a “stimulus”?

We will be fine and a sliding scale makes a lot of sense. However nobody is happy that the company decided to cut employee pay before letting the contractors go.

The place I work announced a pay cut for all white collar jobs lasting this entire year and a mandatory day off ever 3 weeks along with cancelling shut down and requiring anyone who can work from home to do so.

Considering we are entering a depression this type of thing certainly isn’t surprising and I expect more surprises the longer this extends.

Our country simply does everything wrong to financially or even logistically deal with a period of downturn like this many will be wiped out because of the high level of day to day expenses, least of which is wages.