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The article was a gift for skeptics of the recent coronavirus stimulus: A spa business owner who claimed she received a "firestorm of hatred" from employees when she got a loan that would let them get back to work. The CNBC piece didn't quote any of the workers, so HuffPost's Dave Jamieson and Arthur Delaney spoke to some of them. They heard something very different: Yes, some workers making more on unemployment, but they didn't "hate" the idea of going back to work. They just wanted to be safe when they did it.
Dave and Arthur's piece looks at not just these spas, but also a broader debate over whether to pay people to "do nothing" when doing nothing could, quite literally, save lives.
This article functions as something of a rebuttal to the CNBC article suggesting that workers at two Washington state spas were unhappy about the potential of going back to work because they might make more on unemployment. How did your story come about?
Jamieson: The CNBC article really bounced around on Twitter. People didn’t like it! It was one of those unemployment stories that makes regular working people out to be lazy but doesn’t feature the voices of any actual workers. A tweep of mine reached out and said she heard from someone who worked at the spa and felt the story really missed the mark. Would I like to be put in touch? Yes, I would.
This article talked to multiple workers and quoted from internal communications from the owner. What was the reporting like?
Jamieson: I’ve found during the pandemic that people are really angry about what they’re dealing with at work and they’re quite willing to put you in touch with colleagues and provide internal emails, group texts, etc. One interview quickly turned into a handful, all confirming one another’s accounts. The owner did not answer questions, but we got enough of her own words in group texts that we were comfortable running the story without her response.
This fits into a broader political argument about the social safety net, which means that even during a pandemic, people accepting help will be painted by some as freeloaders. Arthur has written about why this situation — where people shouldn't be going to work, rather than are unable to — is different. Can you explain more about that?
Delaney: Unemployment insurance is complicated, as it's designed to help people survive, continue most of their consumer spending, and it has the macroeconomic effect of supporting wages and prices. But right now it's really simple: There's a plague outside! The only cure is staying home! It is weird that Republicans are talking about unemployment like there's no pandemic.
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