A strange thing happened this spring.
As co-workers began to get sick, essential worker Yudelka LaVigna took an unpaid leave of absence. When she got her unemployment benefits, she realized something unheard of: She was making more money not working.
"That just kind of opens your eyes," says LaVigna, who's now back at her New York call center job for essential services.
When the government shut down the U.S. economy in a bid to tame the spread of the coronavirus, Congress scrambled to help tens of millions of people who lost jobs. The government rushed one-time relief checks to all families that qualified and tacked an extra $600 onto weekly unemployment benefits, which are usually less than regular pay and vary by state.
But so far, lawmakers have not passed any measure to increase pay for workers who were asked to keep going to work during a highly contagious health crisis. Some companies did create hazard, or "hero," pay — typically around $2 extra an hour or a one-time bonus. Most have since ended it.
So those boosted unemployment checks have created a bizarre distortion in the labor market, where holding on to a job doesn't guarantee being financially better off than losing one.
LaVigna says it's a weird imbalance. "You feel like, you guys [the government] never have money for people that really need it, and all of a sudden you have money for everybody," she says. "But then the people that are still essentially working don't get the recognition that they deserve."
Few employers have compensated extra for on-site work amid the health crisis. A recent survey by the Economic Policy Institute found that fewer than a third of people who had to leave their homes to work during the pandemic received additional pay or benefits. As U.S. coronavirus cases persist and some states are even backtracking their reopening plans, workers have flooded social media with calls for hazard pay.
The Facebook group "Give Essential Workers Essential Pay" drew nearly 4,000 members in a matter of weeks: cashiers and bus drivers, pharmacy technicians and sanitation workers, welders and machinists. They post pictures of the thank-you gifts their companies have sent them: hats, bracelets, T-shirts and gift cards.