Heroes Fund

[skives]

Senate Democrats want to setup up a “Heroes Fund” in phase four of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Essential Workers would be paid up to $13 per hour extra by the US government and the benefit would be capped at $25k. This would be retroactive to the beginning of the crisis and last till the end of the year. What are your thoughts on this?

My thought is healthcare workers would get the $13 per hour more and lower down the line like grocery store would get maybe $5 more per hour.

https://rb.gy/njo0kw

[kork13]

I don't see the justification or need for it. "Essential workers" would have been employed (or working overtime), and already compensated as such. What's the intention behind it? Just give a hat-tip to say "thanks for doing your job"? I mean, even if the idea is to compensate for the "hardship" of working during the pandemic response, $13/hour is enormously rich. In the military, we get paid less than $10/day as hazardous, hardship, or hostile fire duty pay. Think about it... they give us an extra $225/mo if we're getting shot at. Certainly there's the argument that we sign up for that to an extent... But really? 10x that for doing your normal job stocking grocery shelves? If they want to do something like that for them, I'd make it a percentage of normal pay... 10%-20% (up to some maximum dollar figure). Otherwise, you're just throwing stupid money at people.

[Scallywag]

I disagree. They are doing their jobs AND getting paid. I understand that this is hazardous, but they trained / studied to do this. The money should go to help the struggling masses

[disneysteve]

I agree with kork and Scallywag. The folks who are still working and getting paid aren't the ones suffering. Give that money to all of the people who have lost their jobs, possibly permanently, as a result of this situation.

[Butterscotch]

There are plenty of grocery workers making bs federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and Im all over the idea of paying them some kind of bonus. Especially because they’ve likely had to deal with nasty, rude, hoarders buying everything up. And then they have to deal with people yelling at them when everything is sold out!
So yes, give them extra tax payer money. I’d rather grocery works get some cash than some God awful 5 billion dollar military jet nonsense.

I don’t work in grocery, but if I did there is no way in hell I wouldn’t have quit when all this started.