 Welcome yet again to another crisis conversation live from the Better Life Lab. I'm Brigitte Schulte, the director of the Better Life Lab, coming to you from my home office, my social distancing home office. Today it might be a little crazy. We have a hole in our ceiling, crazy mishap where it was raining through the kitchen ceiling. So I've got some coronavirus workers with their face masks on trying to fix the hole. So hopefully it won't be too loud. With that, let me just turn it over just very briefly to say this week we have another just kind of crazy situation where millions of more people have applied for unemployment insurance. So in the last three weeks we've got 16 million people out of work in the United States. And so we want to talk about that today. What does that mean? How do you how do you live when you don't have work? How much work shapes our lives? But also really explore, you know, what kinds of jobs are these? You know, so many of them are low wage and didn't have benefits and we're kind of crappy to begin with. And how do we make sure that coming out of this on the other side? How do we make decent work? Good work. How can we learn from this coronavirus in the long run? But then what do we do in the short run? So we'll have some stories from people. We definitely want to hear your stories, share your views. But let me at this point turn it over to Rachel Deutsch, who's our main guest this week. She's the supervising attorney for the Center for Popular Democracy, supervising for worker justice. So Rachel, you work so often so much with with workers. What are you seeing in the field? You know, kind of talk a little bit about, you know, these are enormous numbers. What are you seeing? What does this mean for workers in their individual lives, but also for us as a nation? Yeah, the numbers are pretty astonishing, Bridget, you know, over 16 million people filing for unemployment in the last couple weeks. That's approximately one in 10 American workers. And I think the scary thing is that that really understates the impact on working families right now because there are, you know, in almost every state, the unemployment insurance systems are kind of overwhelmed, you know, they've been neglected for years. So the infrastructure is not great. We hear people all the time that they can't, you know, get through by phone. So when we have a digital divide that not everybody has access to filing online or encounters and technical glitches online that they're not able to get through by phone and file their claims that way. So I think the real scope of people who are seeking unemployment is probably much higher. There are also ways in which, you know, the federal government recently expanded eligibility for people who are self-employed or gig workers or folks who didn't have income in the sort of prior period are now eligible, but that piece hasn't really rolled out yet, right? So there are a lot more people who actually need income supports immediately and are not getting it. One other sort of sort of trend all name is that in some of the Southern states, the governors did not impose social distancing as early and so job losses are happening kind of later. And so we're seeing a real spike in the South in terms of unemployment claims. And then just, you know, this obviously isn't impacting people equally, right? There are people who can still telework, work from home like you and I are very fortunate to have that. The people who are really getting hit hard are people in the service sector and hospitality in retail, in food service. And those again are folks who experience the most instability, the lowest wages to begin with. So they don't have a safety net, they don't have incomes, they don't have savings. You know, the trend is to not know how many hours you're going to get in a given week and it's very, very hard to budget or save. And then the last thing I'll say is that in retail in particular, you know, it's the sort of January to March is the slowest period. And so for a lot of folks, they were coming into the coronavirus with, you know, lower hours than they even had during normal times and especially not well equipped to kind of withstand this gap that we're now seeing between job loss, income loss, you know, people who experience a loss in hours are still eligible for unemployment. Most people don't even know that, right? And so there's I think a real, a real crisis that's hitting a lot of people's family budgets right now. Yeah, you know, one of the things that struck me I was reading there's a piece in the New York Times and a historian, Patrick Wyman told the, he's quoted there, he says, crises like this reveal what is already broken or in the process of breaking in societies. And, you know, when you talk about so many of these jobs, they're low wage, they don't have benefits, they're, you know, low hours or unpredictable hours. You know, I would argue that that's already broken. How did we get here to the point where we're losing these jobs, but they're really awful jobs? How did we get to the point where we have so many awful jobs? Is this sort of the, in the last couple of decades, we've had this tradeoff between, you know, we're preferencing shareholders rather than workers and worker wellbeing? And does this give us an opportunity to rethink that equation? Yeah, I mean, I think shareholder capitalism and the sort of short termism that that drives is a very big part of this, you know, one of the areas that I spent a lot of time on is looking at schedule stability. And there's so much evidence there that employers actually benefit, right, over the long term, when they can retain their workforce, because people feel invested in have some amount of stability that there's a job, whether it's wages, benefits, or work hours that people feel like this is a job worth holding on to, right? And that increases their productivity, their, their expertise, you know, in the service sector, this is the shift that's needed is from seeing workers as disposable and a cost that you have to contain to being a key part of your competitive advantage. And so when you do invest in workers, you know, that's the customer service that is setting you apart from your competitors. But unfortunately, that's not the way that, you know, most of the companies in the sector, you know, have organized their, their labor budgets. Yeah. So yeah, I think that's, that's absolutely a big part of it that you need. Well, so, you know, you talk about sort of not looking at workers and seeing this sort of a labor cost at this point, let's turn it over to Caleb. Caleb, you know, you're coming to us from Louisiana, you just graduated from college, you had some, you know, you were one of those people who are working part-time and full-time jobs. Tell us your story, tell us what happened once the coronavirus hit. All right. Well, first, thank you for having me on. Yeah, like, like Rachel said, really, you know, this, this, this is just a horrible crisis. But after graduating college, I was looking for work as like a legal assistant or peer legal since I graduated in political science. But the year prior, I had started working at the mall at a retail store. And, and looking for, you know, that legal system position, I was able to finally pick up a full-time position at a shoe store in the mall just to kind of make ends meet until something came along. And, of course, both the jobs, they were low wage. The, the scheduling was a mess. It was kind of like, I kind of know what I'm going to be doing the next two weeks, but I also kind of don't. I just have to kind of bring things along as they come. I started working at the shoe store for about a week. And then on the 16th of March, the rumors started flying around that the entire mall was going to close. And one of the sayings that all the mall workers have, we have, you know, hell would freeze over before the mall closes. And then the next day I wake up and in my shoe store group chat, we have the managers come in and tell us, hey, the store is going to be closed until the 31st. And my other store, they sent us in our group chat, hey, the store is going to close for 10 days based on the coronavirus will kind of give you updates. And then as things went along, you know, it was kind of evident that the other store was not going to open back up. And as the 31st came along, you know, nothing, they, the company, the shoe store company had basically just sent us an email saying, you know, you've all been temporarily furloughed. This does not mean that you've lost your job. Well, that's great. I'm still on your books, but I'm not getting paid leave. So I mean, you know, okay, great. I have a title in the name only. That's it. So, so what are you doing now? So you, you've had these two jobs, you're furloughed from both of them. Tell us what, you know, have you tried to apply for unemployment? What's, what's, what's going on? How are you making ends meet? Right. So I've applied for unemployment through Louisiana. Unfortunately, Louisiana is a anti union, anti labor state. Or at least the state government, as I would say, the people are not, they're actually more in support of that. But yeah, so upon applying for the unemployment benefits, the state website is incredibly not user friendly. It's highly confusing. Basically everything that the entire website has to offer is sitting on the front page and you're like overwhelmed because you're like, where do I go to technically file? So I think when we were talking the other day, the way you described it was, it was a hot mess. Yeah, yeah, a complete hot mess. In other words, I'm going to choose not to use on the air. But yeah, it's incredibly confusing, but I went and made a claim and I remember about a few days later, it emailed me back and talking about my weekly benefit and I'm looking and I'm like $51 a week. Okay. So $51 a week, that's what they that's what the benefit is. And how are you supposed to pay your bills and buy food and rent and $51 a week? No, I was, I mean, I'm like, okay, I'm grateful I got something. So I was like $51 a week is not any reasonable amount of what can be used to kind of help evolve for some people that that's an entire tank of gas for them. So I was able to finally call and speak to a live person and not the automated system. And she kind of walked me through and helped me with my application. I asked her, I said, why is it that my weekly benefit amount is only $51 when according to the website, it can go up to 247 per week. And she said, well, it's based on the wages that you've earned. And, you know, I'm like, okay, well, that's that's still kind of unfair, because that means I'm kind of caught in a gray zone. Because, like I said, the wages that they've seen have been from mainly from that part time job that I got a year ago, while I was still full time in college. So it's like, I get what you guys are saying by this is the wages that you reported, but it's also, you know, I've graduated. And this is a little unfair as someone who goes to work every day who does what they're supposed to do. You know, it's kind of like, where's my bail out versus we're bailing out, you know, wall shooting big companies. So Rachel, let me let me go back to you and some of the things that you're hearing from workers. You know, this is also where the federal government stepped in, right, and they have this emergency fund where they're going to have $600 a week available. So is this something that Caleb should be able to apply for and get? You're saying that that's it's sort of what we're waiting for the rollout, but is this something that should be able to help workers and who are in situations like Caleb's? Yeah, absolutely. The $600 additional weekly benefit is was really one of the the bright spots in the CARES Act, which was what Congress passed, you know, which was sort of by and large a corporate bailout, but had this one, you know, really good, several good pieces, but primarily the increase to UI benefits. And this is where we're seeing challenges with the implementation, right, because the UI systems are old, because they don't have enough people processing volume of claims. And so each state is sort of in a different place in terms of how soon they'll be able to start getting that additional $600 to people. And one of the things that, you know, we're really pushing for Congress to do now is to increase both the amount of money that's being sent to states to help them very quickly update their systems and increase their capacity to process claims. And yeah, I've been using sort of jargon, but UI means unemployment insurance. And we really just need to shore up the capacity of states to actually get this money into people's hands now, because their bills are not waiting, their rent is not waiting, right, and they need to be able to pay those now. I'll say one other thing, which is that, you know, there are a lot of people out there who don't the experience, you know, that we heard from Caleb about his challenges, you know, like navigating the UI system, there are a lot of people who need, you know, more support, whether it's because of, like, linguistic barriers, because they can't get online for a variety of other reasons. Our network is really trying to push out, you know, to figure out a scale program to actually help people get through to UI to help them successfully file claims, gather their paperwork. We know that, you know, the people who are most likely to file for UI and to receive benefits are people who are college educated, who are professional jobs, usually people who are white, and that people in the service sector who really need these benefits the most typically have the hardest time accessing it. And so if we're going to make this something that helps the people who really most need the money, we actually need to be intentional and thoughtful about how do we support folks to access the system, which was, as Caleb said, not set up to be very user friendly. Well, at this point, let's bring Violet in. Violet is another, she's a retail worker, she's worked in the beauty industry, and she's one of the workers who has wanted to work full time hours, has wanted to have a job with benefits and has not been able to part time work, no benefits. She has some health issues and with no health insurance, she's had to go to emergency rooms, she's got lots of medical bills, and now as of March 31, she's been sort of in a mass firing. And Violet, you were saying that trying to apply for unemployment insurance in Texas is almost like a full time job. Can you tell us, tell us what you're what you've been going through, what's it like for you to try to get some help for unemployment insurance? It's been truly difficult. Hi everyone, by the way. Yeah, it's been really difficult. I've been on the unemployment website trying to apply and calling since eight in the morning this morning. I've been doing it for the past two weeks. It's really difficult. And like Caleb was saying, all the information's on the site when you have to do, but there's no way to apply. There's no way to get through to anybody, to even a real person. It's always automated, unfortunately. So I feel like it's a nine to five job that I'm not even getting paid for it. And I'm calling them so much. In the past two weeks, I've called maybe 800 times. Wow. What's you saying that like there's one day that you that you logged like 400 times that you call 400 times one day. It's like mentally exhausting calling so much. You just feel you just like you want to give up and you just like, you know, I'm just going to try to apply for a job and then you apply for a job. And there's no jobs out there right now. There's like supermarket jobs. You try to apply. So so how are you making ends meet, you know, while you're calling, where you're even trying to get unemployment insurance and looking for other jobs. How are you how are you managing? I'm making nothing right now. Thankfully, my brother, he does work for delivery service. So he's been doing that. And I just been assisting him doing that. That's really what at this point, what I'm doing since I have no income coming in, I did, you know, apply for food stamps and all that stuff and didn't got denied for some things and some other things I did. And so that's I've been buying food. So you did get did you get you got food? Food stamps. Yes, I did not get Medicaid or anything else, but I did get food stamps for sure. So that is helping me out a lot for now until I could get ahold of unemployment. And so, you know, you said that the unemployment, it's a it's a it's a website, but then you get to a certain point and it just sort of breaks down and then you have to call. So it sounds like, you know, is there any, you know, going back to you, Rachel, is this sort of a something that you hear of you're talking about these systems are being sort of overwhelmed, the, you know, the technology is outdated, they've been underfunded, you know, will states have to sign on to get this federal aid? Are they doing that? You know, kind of, do you know, like, what's happening in the process to try to really connect the the money that's supposed to flow from the federal government so that it actually gets to the people who needs it who need it? Yeah, there's no reason for states not to sign on. There's no, you know, downside to them to get this money. They are able to waive the one week waiting period and the job search requirements, which really don't, you know, shouldn't apply in this moment. And the DOL has already put out some guidance. So as far as I understand, you know, there are some states that have kind of moved more quickly. And one other thing I'll say, you know, specific to Texas, where Violet is calling from, employers can actually file claims on behalf of their laid off workforce. And I think that's something that we should be looking at in a lot of other states, right? The company knows who they've laid off, they know, they have all the information about their earnings and their socials and all of that, to the extent that we can have more responsibility on the companies that are executing these mass layoffs to, if not initiate the claims, then at least provide up front the information so that the state has an easier time verifying, right, and can more quickly process the claims. I think that's another sort of piece of the puzzle. So I think there is, you know, some confusion out there that states are, you know, there are states that that just, you know, their programming is running off something from the 1980s, right, and even finding the people who speak, who can code in that, in that language, right, is a challenge. So, you know, we've seen massive disinvestment, particularly in, you know, Republican dominated states in just the UI infrastructure, and that is kind of coming back to haunt them right now. And so the federal government needs to, you know, step up support. And I think we're in a very, very bumpy period that is the result of policy choices that have been made to kind of starve the UI system over the last several years. You know, you talk about policy choices, you know, it's interesting when you look at some of how other countries who are also hard hit by the corona pandemic, although no country quite as hard hit as the United States with, you know, unfortunately, the largest number of cases now. When you look at how other sort of the policy responses of other countries, you know, Denmark or Britain or Germany, they are actually the government stepping in to pay wages to keep workers attached to their jobs, because there's so much more disruption when you actually have these mass layoffs or mass firings and unemployment, you look at the research, it's been so tied to, you know, mental and physical health issues, higher stress, even, you know, even suicide. You know, can you talk about like, you know, could there be a different response in the United States where there, you know, is unemployment and firing and laying everyone off and going through this very kind of broken system? You know, is there a better way to do this? Yeah, I mean, I think there is some conversation right now in, you know, Representative Jayapal has put forward this paycheck guarantee act that would sort of look more to the European model of funneling wages through employers and keeping people employed. I mean, I think there's actually a real question as to whether that's even the best approach for people who work in low-h jobs in the service sector. They do not have health insurance through their job. They do not have benefits through their jobs, right? And so on the one hand, you have the unemployment system, which is failing people in this moment because of administrative challenges, but could ultimately be, you know, a better system for getting people their money during these crises. And then on the other hand, you have the idea of keeping people attached to jobs. And I think that that works very well when you're talking about people who have high quality jobs. It's, to me, a more open question about whether keeping people attached to low quality jobs where they had unstable hours, had no health care, had no paid benefits, you know, really allows us the path to reshape job quality going forward, right? So I don't know. I mean, I think there's a healthy debate happening about that question right now. Yeah. Well, let's go to the last person that we have coming to share their story. So Sarah, she had one of these high quality jobs. You know, she was able to work remotely, like you and I are very privileged to be able to do and work for a global education firm, Sarah, you know, and yet you also were out this week trying to apply for unemployment. Can you tell us, can you briefly tell us your story? Yeah. So a couple of days before April 1st, well, actually, I'll back up, I have two kids, a three year old and a one year old. So as soon as their daycare closed in mid to late March, I informed my work that I needed to immediately go on annual leave. My husband is overseas, so I've got to take care of them. And I assumed that I would be sort of protected and covered under emergency FMLA for people exactly like me who I want to work. My company wants me to work. But I can't because I have to take care of my kids and it's a full time job from 5am to 9pm. And so then a couple of days before April 1st, I was informed that the terms of my furlough actually were, you know, zero work and that I should file for unemployment. And there was a lot of back and forth about it. But, you know, ultimately it was a pretty painful outcome where, you know, Tuesday I put Moana on for my kids to sit there and watch while I tried to click through the Virginia unemployment website. And, and yeah, and I filed. And have you have you heard back from them or kind of what is your because you're the breadwinner for your family right now with your husband overseas, right? Yeah, yeah. So that adds a lot of stress. It's, you know, I've gone through the full range of emotions of anger and resentment and upset and sad and embarrassed and, you know, asking myself, is this somehow my fault? And so, yeah, I haven't heard back yet, which definitely adds to my anxiety. They're supposed to send me something in the mail, like in the snail mail that tells me what I actually qualify for. So I am waiting to hear back. You know, when we were talking the other day, Sarah, you were also saying that this was really the first time in your experience that you really felt kind of punished almost for being, you know, someone with caregiving responsibilities. You know, can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, yeah. So I know, you know, I'm only a wee three years into this whole parenting thing, but never have I ever had trouble sort of like balancing both or ever felt like one subtracted from the other. And, you know, just being in the situation where I know, if I did not have kids to care for, I would be I would, I would be working right now and have my sanity and peace of mind. And but because I have to care for them, you know, I here I am unemployed. You know, so thank you, Sarah. You know, thank you, Violet. Thank you, Caleb. Thank you all for sharing your stories. Rachel, let's let's go back to you. You know, you were talking about really the larger question that's that's really in debate, like how do we create these, you know, better jobs? Or even in Sarah's case, where it is technically a better job, how do we create better systems and better structures that really take workers and worker well-being into account? You know, some people are calling this crisis sort of a once in a generation opportunity to really, you know, remake the structures. What, you know, in your view, what what needs to happen? How do we come out of this on the other side in a better place rather than the worst one? Yeah, I mean, I do think this is a real opportunity to bring together folks who have been on the one hand struggling for years and decades with unstable, unreliable jobs that don't provide security and that other folks, you know, like in Sarah's shoes, who sort of thought they had a good thing going and realized how quickly it could be sort of yanked out from under them and to come together to, you know, demand a new set of standards and a new safety net. I think absolutely part of the solution is, you know, not having employers be the source of all of our security, right? Because that's that's so precarious, right? We need to have Medicare for all. We need to have universal paid sick time, universal paid leave that doesn't, you know, depend only on your employment status. And I think we also need to create some real baseline standards for job quality so that people are not one, you know, mis-paycheck away from eviction or, you know, enormous debt. We need to have, you know, $15 minimum wage and, you know, we need to have stable schedules. We need to make sure that people who want to work full-time have access to full-time jobs. Like, under-employment was a huge issue in this country before, you know, this crisis even hit. And then I think we also need to really think about the voice that working people should have, right, in their workplaces. And, you know, Caleb pointed out that there's been a lot of investment in destroying unions in this country. We need to reverse that. We need to think about other ways for workers to have voice, whether that's a seat on corporate boards. I think both workers and companies would benefit from having the folks that are on the front line of making their companies successful be part of some of these bigger picture questions around how to design work. Yeah. Well, listen, and, you know, we have, like, one minute left. We've got Elaine Meyer who wrote into the chat. Can we bring Elaine in really for a really brief point? And then we'll wrap and let everybody get back to their days. Elaine, are you there? Hi. I'm here, yes. Thank you. Yeah. So, you were making a point that you're a freelancer. So, yeah, can you share your thoughts? Yeah. So, basically, here in Illinois, it's been a little confusing because, as I understand it, the CARES Act gives freelancers some access to benefits. But when I go to the Illinois Department of Revenue site, they're telling us to wait to apply. And it's confusing as to when we'll actually be allowed to apply. So, for me so far, I'm lucky in that I'm actually living with my parents right now, so I don't have the rent pressures that some people do. But I do have health insurance premiums. And it just feels like a big issue for us and also kind of seems like maybe an opportune moment. Like I said, my comment to transition from like what you guys were saying, tying insurance and leave to employers to tying it to or to making it more universal. Yeah. Thank you, Elaine. So, back to your point, Rachel, is this an opportunity, as you're saying, to make the case for some might call it portable benefits that to have everything so tied to a worker has really been, has gotten us to this point where the coronavirus has really shown the cracks in the system. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is not working. And I think it's also important to sort of call out that this is part of what drives a gender gap and a racial wealth gap. Like we've seen the service sector that's being so hard hit and where job quality was so low, that's a place where predominantly people of color are working and predominantly women. And so we have to make a decision about kind of moving into a more equitable economy. And if we don't, we're going to see this crisis continue to just break us apart, you know, along lines of that have already disadvantaged people more, you know, some people more than others. All right. Well, listen, thank you so much, Rachel. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your perspective and your work. Thank you so much for all the work that you do. Caleb, Violet, Sarah, and Elaine, thank you so much for being part of this and sharing your stories. Thank you to all the participants. I also want to thank the Better Life Lab team, my producer, David Shulman, the New America Events team, really grateful for all of you for helping us put these conversations together where we can come together in this kind of crazy fast moving crisis and see if we can make sense of how this is disrupting and changing our work in life, but also look for opportunities for how we can make it better. So next week, please come back. We'll be talking with frontline healthcare workers, many of them who are living far from their families, how that's disrupting work in life, and they're also seeing these very frontline disparities that you're talking about, Rachel. We'll be talking more about that. So I hope that you'll all come back and join us and be part of the conversation as we all try to figure out what to make of this and how to make it better for the future. So thank you all and wash your hands, stay safe, and we'll see you next week.