Yahoo Finance's Melody Hahm joined The Final Round to talk about what corporations are doing to help their "front-line" workers amid the coronavirus crisis.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: Speaking of California, let's bring in Melody Hahm now who joins us from Los Angeles. Melody, you guys were on the leading edge of the shelter-in-place order. I think there's been some confusion what that is and around, you know, who's most vulnerable here. And nonessential workers-- that's basically everybody except people, apparently, who work at grocery stores.

We've seen a lot of companies-- Walmart among them-- trying to reassure their staff, offer them pay increases, and offer them incentives to remain in these stores that we know are basically the only outlet for people who are now being kept in their homes almost indefinitely.

MELODY HAHM: Yeah, Myles. Walmart did announce those plans to provide that special cash bonus-- a one-time bonus-- for hourly associates. It would amount to about $365 million dollars, up to $300 per hourly employee. And of course, both Target and Amazon also raised pay for warehouse and delivery workers by $2 an hour at least through the end of April, beginning of May. Amazon also did announce on Monday that it plans to hire an additional 100,000 warehouse and delivery workers.

And JP Morgan, you know, kind of pivoting here is giving bank tellers and other frontline employees, as they call them, a one-time bonus of $1,000. Of course, banks are considered essential businesses during these times of shelter-in-place.

As you mentioned, in addition to groceries, banks, and of course, health care workers, and a lot of public service officials, they are the ones who are really out in the field being the most vulnerable whereas people like us, of course, have the luxury of being at home. And often, many of us have adopted the policies of self-isolation and social distancing way before the governors have come out with their own policies.

And I want to point out there's some breaking news, as well, from Netflix. They did create a $100 million fund to help creative community workers. As you mentioned, I'm in Los Angeles. Hollywood is getting hit hard. Release dates are being pushed back. Movie theaters, of course, are closed and nonessential. That $100 million fund will be allocated in two ways.

So $85 million is actually earmarked to workers on its productions. The remaining $15 million will go to third parties that are actually helping Hollywood as they navigate this uncertain time. I've spoken with several showrunners and showrunners' assistants who were on projects in places like Vancouver who had to come home immediately.

I was actually supposed to be going to Australia to visit a set where a friend is actually in a movie that was being shot right now, and all of those plans have been scrapped, with no actual plans for when they would pick up production. So yes, in this case, corporate leadership matters so much. And I think when you look at executive pay, as well, most of the major airline CEOs have come out and proactively said they are cutting their base pay, some of them slashing it entirely to zero.

Of course, Arnie Sorensen, Marriott's CEO, recently coming out just now, as well, saying that he will be cutting his base pay for 2020 to $0. As we know, compensation packages often include stock performance, and as you can see from the markets right now, who knows where the 2020 market will end up.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah. You talk about second and third-order effects. You know, the miscellaneous members of the crew on a shoot that aren't part of the union or even are union members-- that's the stuff that, you know, not a lot of people think about. And there's hundreds of thousands of cases of similar stories out there in the workforce.