Thread: Furlough workers amid virus crisis

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Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus said on Monday it would furlough most of its about 14,000 workers, as the coronavirus crisis forced it to close all stores till the end of April.

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Washington (AFP) - Gannett, the largest US newspaper publisher, said Monday it was making unspecified furloughs and pay cuts for its staff in the latest sign of media turmoil from the coronavirus pandemic.

A memo from Gannett chief executive Paul Bascobert said he would forgo his salary and the executive team would take a 25 percent pay cut as part of the belt-tightening at the group which includes the daily USA Today.

"Our plan is to minimize long-term damage to the business by implementing a combination of furloughs and pay reductions," Bascobert said in the memo seen by AFP.

"By choosing a collective sacrifice, we can keep our staff intact, reduce our cost structure, deliver for our readers and clients and be ready to emerge strong and with opportunity to grow when this crisis passes."

Contacted by AFP, the company declined to offer specifics on the cuts.

But The Florida Times-Union, one of the dailies in the group, said a separate staff memo indicated reporters and editors who earn more than $38,000 annually will be scheduled to take an unpaid week off on a rotating basis.

The Gannett actions underscore deepening woes of the media, especially local newspapers, in the face of a pandemic which has cut into advertising and shut down events revenue even as news organizations face demands in covering the crisis.

Gannett agreed last year to a merger with rival GateHouse in a deal aiming for bigger scale to face the challenges of the troubled sector. It now has about 260 newspaper brands and a large digital operation.

Media organizations have been struggling for years amid a shift to digital and mobile news, with hundreds of print publications having been shuttered.

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Baptist Health Medical Center in Arkansas is going to furlough workers at their HOSPITALS, clinics and service centers. They employ 11,000 workers.

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Houston First Corp. will furlough more than half its 200-plus employees, after seeing the COVID-19 pandemic turn its projected $1 million budget surplus into an expected deficit of more than $30 million.

In addition, the downtown city-owned and operated Hilton Americas hotel has furloughed 550 of its 620 employees, general manager Jacques D’Rovencourt told board members during a virtual meeting Thursday afternoon.

Business for the city’s convention agency has screeched to a near halt. Events at the convention center have been canceled — with few exceptions — through June and July, resulting in virtually no revenue, staff told board members Thursday. Occupancy rates at the Hilton Americas are in the single digits, where they are expected to remain into the summer.

Parking revenue also is down 50 to 70 percent, and hotel occupancy taxes are down 35 to 50 percent.

Houston First CEO Brenda Bazan, who in a statement called the furloughs “extremely difficult,” said the last few weeks have been the most trying in her 40-plus-year career. She said she previously thought nothing could get worse than the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.

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NEW BEDFORD — One of the area’s largest employers, The Acushnet Company, has ceased operation at its golf ball manufacturing plants, placing the employees who work there on furlough as of March 27.

Acushnet Company produces golf equipment and clothing, with a headquarters and distribution center in Fairhaven and golf ball manufacturing plants in New Bedford.

The director of communications for Titleist, Joe Gomes, said they suspended their golf ball operations on March 16, but kept some essential services up and running, including building security, data security, and transportation logistics which includes a “skeleton crew” at the distribution center.

The suspension of golf ball operations was extended, according to Gomes.

“Regarding the ball plants, I can tell you that due to health and safety precautions and government advisories in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we (Acushnet Company) have extended the suspension of our Golf Ball Operations in our Massachusetts facilities, with a targeted reopening date of May 4, 2020,” Gomes said in an email, “Hourly associates in these facilities will be placed on furlough during this time and will retain their full selected Acushnet benefits.”

Gomes said the decision to reopen will depend on a number of factors including health and safety concerns and government actions.

“We are committed to resuming our Golf Ball Operations as soon as it is safe for our associates and the local community,” Gomes said.

Since Gov. Charlie Baker announced the closure of all non-essential businesses in the state to stem the spread of the coronavirus, there has been a debate about what businesses should actually be deemed essential.

Two employees of Acushnet Company, who said they wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, questioned last week why they were still required to come into work, since the golf ball manufacturing plants had closed.

 

 

“I really don’t see how they can spin the golf equipment, marketing materials or people issuing credits to companies as essential,” one employee said last week, “At least 10 states won’t have anyone to receive things anyway.”

Gomes said employees who are able to have been encouraged to work remotely.

Those employees who are not able to work remotely, according to Gomes, were told if they do not feel comfortable in the workplace for any reason to inform his or her manager and “that associate would be allowed to stay home with pay.”

 

The two employees both said they were not given that option, but were instead told they would have to use personal time off if they wanted to stay home.

“Nobody expressed that to me,” one employee said about the company saying they were able to stay home with pay.

“When we have brought it up, they told us we can stay home but we won’t get paid,” another employee said on Thursday.

The employee went on to say 90% of the company was working remotely or not working.

 

 

“We just kind of feel like the trash of the company,” she said, since that group of workers had to keep working in the facilities and the other employees were initially sent home with pay.

Then on Friday, after The Standard-Times initially reached out to Acushnet Company, that employee said “One of the managers from Titleist just called me and said they are shutting down till further notice. They will pay us for next week but we will have to open a claim April 6th.”

When The Standard-Times reached out to confirm this information with Gomes, he said the source was not providing accurate information.

When asked to clarify what was inaccurate about the employee’s statements on Monday, Gomes said, “Consistent with the governor’s advisory regarding logistics and transportation, we do have skeleton crews in place at our distribution center that are continuing to practice strict social distancing measures. As discussed on our original phone call last week, associates were provided the opportunity to not come into work if they did not feel comfortable during this unprecedented time.”

The other employee said he was also told Friday that he would be off this week with pay, but said 10 employees were still working in the distribution center.

He did say those employees were given the choice to keep working or not.

The employee called going into work during the pandemic stressful and said he was glad when he was told he would no longer have to come in.

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TAMPA, FL – The Tampa Bay Times has announced that it will be furloughing staff members and printing editions only on Sunday and Wednesdays beginning on Monday, April 6, because of a decrease in advertising due to the new coronavirus pandemic.

The paper announced the temporary print reduction on Monday and said it would continue to publish an electronic replica of the paper every day online.

Some staff members will be put on furlough for eight weeks and other staff members will have their hours reduced, the paper said. The most impacted staff members will be those in the production and delivery operations.

In addition, starting with this coming Sunday's edition, the paper will add a tabloid section called Game Times that includes a week's worth of puzzles and games, and will bring back the Perspective section, which includes opinions and columns on April 12.

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WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) The City of Wichita furloughs more than 300 of its workers in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The furloughs will be in place from March 28 through April 23.

In an email, Wichita city officials tell 301 of its employees they will be placed on a temporary furlough.

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Most Minor League Baseball teams have managed to avoid layoffs due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the Memphis Redbirds (Class AAA; Pacific Coast League) and sister USL Championship team Memphis 901 FC confirmed layoffs and employee furloughs.

All in all, 18 full-time employees were laid off last Friday, with other full-time employees furloughed in the meantime. The teams both play at AutoZone Park, and both MiLB and USL Championship play in sports with suspended seasons, and no start date in site. From the Daily Memphian:

On Monday, [Craig] Unger gave the following statement to The Daily Memphian: “As a result of the economic impact from the postponement of sports and events at the facility due to the unforeseen and unexpected COVID-19 emergency, we have made the difficult decision to right-size our staff during this period.

“To assist our teammates, we are filing unemployment claims on their behalf and covering 100% of their health insurance premiums of front office employees affected by these adjustments.

“We look forward to resuming our seasons and welcoming fans back to AutoZone Park as soon as it’s safe to reopen.”

Unger is president of both teams. Principal Owner Peter Freund is a minority owner of the New York Yankees and Principal Owner of Trinity Sports Holdings, which also owns the Williamsport Crosscutters (Short Season A; NY-Penn League) and has a stake in the Charleston RiverDogs (Low A; Sally League). Freund has invested in facilities in both Williamsport and Memphis while investing in pro soccer in Memphis, bring in Tim Howard as a player-coach and minority investor for Memphis 901. Because of success in two wildly different markets, Trinity Sports Holdings was our 2017 Organization of the Year, while previous investments in AutoZone Park upgrades earned our Best Ballpark Renovation Award in 2015.

The shutdown off the season cuts Minor League Baseball a few ways. Besides suspending games and delaying the season opening, shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic takes away the change for any offseason income via non-baseball events, which has grown into a potentially vital side business for many teams.

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Another tech unicorn is feeling the pinch of doing business during the coronavirus pandemic. Today, Kabbage, the SoftBank-backed lending startup that uses machine learning to evaluate loan applications for small and medium businesses, is furloughing a “significant number” of its U.S. team of 500 employees, according to a memo sent to staff and seen by TechCrunch, in the wake of drastically changed business conditions for the company. It is also completely closing down its office in Bangalore, India, and executive staff is taking a “considerable” pay cut.

The announcement is effective immediately and was made to staff earlier today by way of a video conference call, as the whole company is currently remote working in the current conditions.

Kabbage  is not disclosing the full number of staff that are being affected by the news (if you know, you can contact us anonymously). It’s also not putting a time frame on how long the furlough will last, but it’s going to continue providing benefits to affected employees. The intention is to bring them back on when things shift again.

“We realize this is a shock to everyone. No business in the world could have prepared for what has transpired these past few weeks and everyone has been impacted,” co-founder and CEO Rob Frohwein wrote in the memo. “The economic fallout of this virus has rattled the small business community to which Kabbage is directly linked. It’s painful to say goodbye to our friends and colleagues in Bangalore and to furlough a number of U.S. team members. While the duration of the furlough remains uncertain, please bear in mind that the full intention of furloughing is temporary. We simply have no clear idea of how long quarantining or its reverberations in the economy will last.”

Kabbage’s predicament underscores the complicated and stressful calculus faced by tech companies built around providing services to SMBs, or fintech (or both, as in the case of Kabbage).

SMBs are struggling right now in the U.S.: many operate on very short terms when it comes to finances, and closing their businesses (or seeing a drastic reduction in custom) means they will not have the cash to last 10 days without revenue, “and we’re already well past that window,” Frohwein noted in his memo.

In Kabbage’s case, that means not only are SMBs not able to be evaluated and approved for normal loans at the moment, but SMBs that already have loans out are likely facing delinquencies.

The decision to furlough is hard but in relative terms it’s good news: it was made at the eleventh hour after a period when Kabbage was considering layoffs instead.

The company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in equity and debt, and it was in a healthy state before the coronavirus outbreak. The memo notes that the “board and our top investors are aware of the challenges we are facing and have committed to helping us through this period,” although it doesn’t specify what that means in terms of financial support for the business, and whether that support would have been there for the business as-is.

The shift to furlough from layoffs came in the wake of an announcement yesterday by Steven Mnuchin, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, who clarified that “any FDIC bank, any credit union, any fintech lender will be authorized” to make loans to small businesses as a part of the U.S. government’s CARE Act, the giant stimulus package that included nearly $350 billion in loan guarantees for small businesses.

While that provides much-needed relief for these businesses, the implementation of it — the Small Business Administration has already received nearly 1 million claims for disaster-relief loans since the crisis started — has been and is going to be a challenge.

That effectively opens up an opportunity for Kabbage and companies like it to revive and reorient some of its business. (Its USP was always that the AI it uses, which draws on a number of different sources of online data for the business, means a more creative, faster and more accurate assessment of loan applications than what traditional banks typically provide.) Kabbage said it is in “deep discussions” with the Treasury Department, the White House and the Small Business Administration to help expedite applications for aid.

While loans still make up the majority of Kabbage’s business, the company has been making a move to diversify its services, and in recent times it has made acquisitions and launched new services around market intelligence insights and payments services. While there has certainly been a jump in e-commerce, overall the tightening economy will have a chilling effect on the wider market, and it will be worth seeing what happens with other tech companies that focus on loans, as well as adjacent financial services.

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The Center Theater Group has postponed all its summer programming indefinitely, including the cover of “1776” directed by Diane Paulus, the one-man show by Aasif Mandvi “Sakina’s Restaurant” and the world premiere of the play by Rajiv Joseph on LeBron James, “King James”. “

The three productions were slated to close the 2019-2020 season at the CTG Ahmanson Theater, the Kirk Douglas Theater and the Mark Taper Forum, respectively. They’ve been put on hold due to the new coronavirus epidemic and “uncertainty around the world about public gatherings and when these activities can safely resume,” wrote artistic director Michael Ritchie and general manager and CEO Meghan Pressman in a joint statement Monday evening.

“We are truly living in an unprecedented era. The COVID-19 crisis is something we have never seen in our lifetime, in the world at large and in its implications for our theater community, “the statement said.

 

The losses led Los Angeles’ largest non-profit theater company to lay off about 50% of its full-time and part-time staff until August 9. Furloughed employees will continue to receive their current health benefits, the company said. Staff who remain employed face reduced wages or reduced hours.

The loss of ticket sales and the cancellation of its annual fundraising gala create an estimated budget deficit of $ 6 million, the company said.

“As a non-profit organization with more than 75% of our annual ticket sales revenue, such unexpected losses are beyond devastating, both for our financial situation and for our continuing mission to produce theater, “the statement said.

“We work tirelessly to explore all of the options, knowing that each member of staff is part of our family. We have made it our top priority to take care of as many employees as possible at this horrible time. “

The Center Theater Group said it remains committed to reopening cinemas in the fall. Ahmanson’s 2021-22 season includes “Hadestown”, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “The Lehman Trilogy”, “The Prom” and “Les Misérables”, as well as return engagements from “Come From Away”, ” Ain’t Too Proud “And” Dear Evan Hansen. “

The company said it was trying to add the musical “Once on this island,” canceled earlier this month for the upcoming Ahmanson season in partnership with other theaters. CTG said it was “in the process of” securing “1776” immediately after hitting Broadway.

“We are confident that the urgency of our collective health concerns will go away, that Los Angeles will thrive again, and that our entire family from the Center Theater Group will return to work as we prepare to reopen the doors of our hall. “, concludes the press release.

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Theme park company SeaWorld Entertainment (NYSE:SEAS), famous for its dolphin and orca displays, announced that it means to furlough 90% of its employees on April 1 for an indefinite period. The furlough comes after SeaWorld closed all of its parks in response to the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. during March. After getting a last few days of pay, the workers will receive no wages or salaries for the duration of the shutdown.

The news came on Friday, March 27, in a current report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The furlough affects a workforce consisting of 12,000 part-time workers and 4,700 full-timers. SeaWorld noted that these workers are eligible to apply for unemployment benefits while awaiting the parks' reopening.

J.P. Morgan analysis indicates the theme park closures could cost SeaWorld approximately $233 million in revenue this year. Estimates put the reduction in traffic at the parks due to the coronavirus at 3 million people, lowering total attendance to 19.6 million from a potential 22.6 million, according to the research note.

SeaWorld's measures to honor tickets and reservations disrupted by the park closures include extending domestic single-day ticket viability to Dec. 31 of this year. Date-specific "in-park experiences" and other types of reservations will be eligible for rescheduling for any date before the end of the year with zero change fees, subject to availability.

The few employees not furloughed include those who care for the parks' animals, an unavoidable fixed cost that needs to be continued throughout the closure period.

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Urban Outfitters to furlough 'substantial number' of employees for 60 days

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Nordstrom paristhithi enti..