After the fire, NC leaves jobless QVC workers out in the cold
A week before Christmas, disaster struck in Rocky Mount as fire engulfed a distribution center of the online marketer QVC.
One employee died in the fire and 1,953 employees, after a period of extended pay, were laid off last Tuesday.
Now those jobless workers will go from an accidental disaster into a deliberate one – North Carolina’s broken unemployment insurance program. Republican state lawmakers took a hammer to the program in 2013. They limited eligibility, cut the maximum weekly benefit by 35 percent and shortened the duration of coverage.
The maximum benefit, unchanged after nine years, is $350 a week, although the average payment is about $230 a week. The duration of benefits, which is tied to the unemployment rate, is currently 12 weeks – less than half the 26-weeks most states provide and North Carolina previously provided.
Most QVC employees lost jobs that paid $25,000 to $35,000 annually and included benefits. They will be hard-pressed to pay their bills and afford health insurance with what the state will provide.
“Twelve weeks is not a lot, and a maximum of $350 in this day and age makes it awfully difficult,” said David Farris, CEO of the Rocky Mount Area Chamber of Commerce. “I can’t imagine the stress that puts them under.”
The chamber and the United Way of the Tar River Region are collecting donations to help the QVC workers. So far, Farris said, about $250,000 has come in. The state Department of Commerce is helping to arrange job fairs. Meanwhile, instead of offering adequate financial help, Republican lawmakers are telling those who lost their incomes to a fire to “get a job.”
State Sen. Wiley Nickel, a Wake County Democrat, has pressed his Republican colleagues on the Joint Legislative Committee on Unemployment Insurance to improve the program. “It’s just political malpractice not to fix this system,” Nickel told me. “The goal in the legislature is to let this program wither and die on the vine.”
The unemployment insurance program payout is so meager that even a modest tax on employees – about $130 per year per employee – is piling up cash in the program’s trust fund. Wiley said the fund now holds $3.1 billion – about $2 billion more than most states have in their funds.. As the jobless receive paltry payments, he said, “We are hoarding this cash.”
John Quinterno, a principal with the Chapel Hill research company South by North Strategies who studies North Carolina workforce issues, said the state’s feeble assistance reflects a misunderstanding of unemployment insurance. It is not a safety net program, he said; it is an insurance program that pools revenue to cover an individual’s unexpected losses and cushion the wider economy when unemployment spikes.
The strong supplements to unemployment benefits that the federal government provided earlier in the pandemic masked the weakness of North Carolina’s ability to deal with widespread job losses. But the higher payments broadly distributed to company and self-employed workers demonstrated the value of providing benefits that meet the need.
“We showed that a better system is possible in the United States, and now we are trying to unlearn those lessons and return to a system that was not very beneficial,” Quinterno said.
Back in Rocky Mount, Farris said donations to help the QVC workers have come in from places around the nation in amounts large and small. “I just think it’s wonderful that people are that caring at whatever level,” he said. “Just that little generosity of people who don’t know anyone here and their heart leads them to do something.”
Too bad that Republican state lawmakers, with $3.1 billion in reserve, don’t feel feel the same.
To donate to help the QVC workers, go to www.unitedwaytrr.org/firefund, or write to: United Way Tar River Region, 2501 Sunset Avenue, Rocky Mount, NC 27804
Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-829-4512, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com
