Laborer jobs. Nowadays, gig work is associated with platforms. Apps. These are temporary jobs that you get through your phone. Host lets look at some of the numbers from the Labor Department to see the trajectory of an unemployment in the country as a result is what has happened with the pandemic. March 21, we had 3. 5 million jobless claims. The following week, 6. 8 million. The week ending april 4, 6. 6 million. Right now, we are approaching nearly 17 million americans claiming unemployment benefits. Guest thats right. Theres no doubt about it. This is a very serious economic crisis, stemming from this Major Public Health crisis. Host for those who are driving uber, working parttime, minimumwage jobs, what are the options for them . Well, as your previous speaker suggested, some companies are benefiting from this crisis. Companies such as amazon, instacart, uber drivers. Other companies are hurting. Theres a lot of variety in the gig economy. Some are doing well. Some jobs are opening. Others are crashing and burning like airbnb. As we know, there are lots of people hurting right now who need work. That stimulus package just isnt cutting it, as your previous caller said. Its not working. Its not enough. They need to be looking at jobs such as instacart delivery to make ends meet for now. Which may help. Forlso puts them at risk catching the coronavirus. Host you are in one of the states that is the epicenter, new york city. Hit hard. What about upstate new york, the buffalo area where you are at . Host guest we are not in crisis like new york city is. It is here. We are on lockdown. We are taking this very seriously. Aware that our neighbor, new york city, a few hours away, is struggling so much. Within weeks, we could be in the same position. Host lets go to bob in auburn, maine. Good evening. Caller yes. Example that an you are an 18yearold student who would have graduated in the next 30 days and who would have started college at harvard or princeton orate or a similar top Major College in the fall. Now your father is now going to 7,500ut seven point for the next four years. That 30,000w that is going to be higher. Think that the japanese are going to continue to hold at 2. 5 interest, you know that that is not going to happen. By the time that 18yearold College Student graduates from college, the National Debt has doubled. Host the debt we talked about at the top of the program is now in excess of 23 trillion. From your area of expertise, how does that impact the job market, businesses hiring . Guest you know, this crisis is unfolding so fast. We just cant see the shots that are coming at us every day. We dont yet know what will happen on the ground. It is scary for everyone. It is scary for High Schoolers that are graduating and unsure if they can go to college at the fall. Its scary front employed workers. Its scary for workers who have jobs but are scared of getting the coronavirus every single day they go to work. We are in a terrifying situation. Suggested, with this looming debt over us, it is a serious crisis. It is hard to make sense of it. Host lets go to don from red bank, new jersey. How long have you been out of work . Caller im not really out of work. Im a natural doctor. Im advising people over the phone. Ive been advising some nurses on how to take care of this naturally. The one thing that people have to realize is the core temperature goes down. Very important thing is to keep your core temperature up. Hot water bottle. Put a winter hat on, a hoodie. Go under and sleep for eight hours. Eat garlic. Take a clove of garlic and swallow it like it was a vitamin. Host lets move onto brent joining us from oregon. We will stick to the area of expertise of our guest. Read your question. Caller im 100 disabled. I dont have any transportation. I live in the country. Out that finding people have been getting more on their food stamps from friends in oklahoma week ago. I didnt get any more on my food stamps. I called the Disability Office and they said they didnt know anything about it. Who do i call the find out . They said they didnt know. Way before i became disabled. Inecame disabled in one day the hospital. I ended up in intensive care. Now they say i wont get any of the relief because i owe taxes from a job years before that. I just wanted everybody to know that thats how disabled people are being treated. They are being told that nobody has any answers for the russians. They dont have any phone numbers for me to call to get those answers. Host to his point and to others who have been calling in, there are so many extenuating circumstances if you are a good worker and you are out of work. You may not qualify front of limit benefits. You are wondering if you will get that 600 that the Treasury Department talked about. What are the alternatives right now . Guest there arent too many. One thing that is emerging clearly from this crisis is that disadvantaged workers, their disadvantages being exacerbated. The crisis is making more apparent, it is compounding the disadvantages that are ready existed. Workers that are disabled, people who cannot work, marginalized workers, workers who are contracted as unskilled but are now seen as essential, they are paid a minimum wage. All of these workers who were previously and are still disadvantaged, this crisis is going to intensify their disadvantage. Folks are hurting. They are hurting a lot from this crisis. Host during the campaign of 2020, there was a lot of debate over universal basic income. Has this renewed that debate . Guest i dont know if it has renewed the debate on a widespread scale yet. Is making the argument quite clear. One of the things i keep thinking of is that if it is a good idea now, why wasnt it a good idea before . If extending unemployment to give workers gig workers collective idea now, why not before the crisis . If giving everyone a modest amount of money so that they can feed their families with security is a good idea, and i do think it is, i would argue that it is also a good idea before this serious crisis. Host our guest is a professor of sociology at the university in buffalo. We go to lauren in fort lauderdale, florida. Gig employees. What is your job right now . Caller im a massage therapist. I was working fulltime. I had a fantastic schedule of people. Anymore, ildnt work was dead. I didnt have any more customers. Zero coming in. Im a 1099 worker. I dont qualify for most things. Maybe the care act. Its very difficult. The place i work for is a momandpop business, completely shut down. If they open everything, a lot of people want to open. Someone like me, do i want to go to work right away . I went to many websites. Im single, not married, no kids. You dont qualify for anything. Thank you for taking my call. Host good luck to you. Guest yes. Exactly like lauren, so many workers, workers who are independent contractors, 1099, they do not qualify for all the employment protections and benefits for this crisis. For the most part, they dont now. As i understand it, some benefits are now being extended in some states to 1099 workers including unemployment. I would encourage lauren to check on the roles in florida to see if she actually qualifies for some kind of relief. Shes right. All of these workers have provided essential services. Whether or not they are deemed a employees of ache company, they are providing services for their customers. They need to be taken care of. Host davis joining us from florida. Also a good worker. What was your job . Caller thanks for having me on. Im a musician, lifelong bass player. World worked for disney as a basis. I was there fulltime for 14 years. Time, 1099 work. I have about 1520 of 2019 saved with w2. The rest was 1099. A lot of friends are musicians in central florida. Even some in nevada. We were excited to read about the cares act. One thing that came from the American Federation of these sessions said that it would provide for gig workers, finally. Selfemployed people were going to get half of the states maximum for up to 39 weeks plus the federal 600 in addition for up to 16 weeks. We were all looking forward to this. It took me two weeks just to get my pin reset on the florida unappointed. Ad to get through to wait a career Source Florida office because i couldnt get through. I did got help. I filed my application. Right now, my application says pending. Its a wildcard. We dont know if we will get this. There are lots of articles about this in florida. People will still not get a dime from the state. It will be implement in the federal. Its a crazy time. Guest you are absolutely right. I think its emblematic of so many workers across the states right now. So many pieces are experiencing this. Goodness. Gig workers and independent contractors are finally going to qualify for benefits. On the other hand, where are the benefits . When will they come through . Worker after worker is saying that the benefits, if they come at all, may not arrive for another module through month or two. The u. S. Is recreating bureaucracy to accommodate independent contractors and other workers to qualify for these benefits. Which they should qualify. It means impossible backups and situations for workers who are trying to make ends meet on the ground. Host we go to henderson, nevada. Tell us your story. I live in henderson, nevada. It is really close to las vegas. A lot of las vegas economy is based on gig workers. When i tried to call the unappointed office, you are always on hold or you cant get through. Is there any support for the Unemployment Office so they can meet the demand for locals who want to have their questions answered about whether they qualify for unemployment . Out is myith filling real concern. A lot of las vegas is gig workers. Host we went from a couple hundred thousand people out of work to approaching 70 million. A huge uptick in those filings for unemployment benefits. This is an impossible situation. The people who are suffering are the workers. They desperately need work and simply cant make ends meet. They dont know whats going to happen, dont know if the benefits are going to come through or if they qualify. As far as i know, i dont know if theres help for the unemployed and offices. It would be great if there was help for offices and workers on the ground simply understand the bureaucracy of it, to understand if they qualify. People are scrambling to put those resources together. I just dont think they are readily available for most people at this point. Host john in lawrenceville, georgia. Good evening. Caller good evening. Anda computer consultant have had to shift my work to help people with some of these through ontoetting the department of labor site and all of that. Does this give us an opportunity to shift to more of a barter system . If we have skills, we can help people that dont have the same skills that we do and we are able to accept something that they may be able to do. I helped a lady go through her made ausiness and she ton of different masks for my family. Does this give us an opportunity to move forward to looking at a different model . Host thank you, john. Guest certainly interesting question. Crisis at this moment of , it opens new opportunities. Good i thinksome that in this time of crisis. You will see a lot of things like that going on. People coming together in new and surprising ways to figure things out. To make ends meet. I dont know if those ties will be sustained once the crisis subsides. It would be exciting if they did. We dont know. Host acai from stafford, virginia. Good evening. Caller good evening and thanks for taking my call. ,y comments on the question is i just want to scream sometimes. Workingjust started last november. She had a job as a cleaner. She did not work one year because we have a son who was disabled. She stayed with him. She started working parttime in november. She made about 100 a week. 400 for the month. We applied for Unemployment Insurance and they denied her because they went through her taxes in 2018. She did not work. For 2019 as aes joint couple. They center a letter that said, your income is zero because theres no wage for 2018. We are trying to go online to do something, to explain to them that we already did our 2019 taxes. Complain oray to update our information or anything like that. Thank you so much for taking my call. Host good luck to you. Thank you for the call. I think this is a real problem for a lot of people. When people are in crisis in this way, they really are in deep crisis, the bureaucracy is also in crisis. Completely scrambling. Its a total mess. Bureaucracies are not well set up for many things. Dealing with individual lives, dealing with individual Horror Stories is not their forte. In dealing with so many people in crisis, bureaucracy is not well suited to that task. Someoneoneonone with who has a complicated story, who needs to explain the situation, in this moment, the bureaucracy is overwhelmed. They will not be able to serve you that well. Host tim, you are selfemployed . Caller thats correct. Host what do you do . Caller we have multibusinesses. They are all small, basically an Insulation Company is my bread maker. I am very fortunate that there is the Small Business program. Is thatlem that we have we are considered a nonessential business. We applied. They said we could get the money any day. We had eight weeks suspended. All my people are on unemployment. They in order for me to spend it, i would have to take them off of unemployment which is what they want and bring them on payroll. , where the help itld be is if we can take and utilize it when we are allowed to work again to cover payroll so that we can rebound a little bit. Host thanks for the call. You are breaking up little bit but i think we got the essence of what you were saying. Professor, how would you respond . Guest yeah. Thats a really interesting point. The Small Business recovery is not my area of expertise. It does seem like you are putting a you are caught in a catch22. How to serve your workers in the best way that you can answer for your community and business in the best way that you can. They dont seem compatible with the mandate of the program at this time. Hopefully, those wrinkles will be ironed out moving forward. I just dont know. Host our guest is an associate professor of sociology, joining us from buffalo. She teaches at the university of buffalo. Thank you for being with us. Its all available on demand. Watch white house briefings come updates from governors and state officials. Track the spread through the u. S. And the world with interactive maps, watch ondemand anytime unfiltered it cspan. Org coronavirus. Television has changed and cspan began 41 years ago but our Mission Continues to provide an unfiltered view of government. We brought you primary election coverage, the president ial impeachment process and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online or on our free radio app. And be part of the National Conversation through cspan daily washington journal programs or through social media feed, cspan created by private industry, americas table Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you by your television provider. Gov. Brown good afternoon. Thank you for joining me today. Fornt to share my framework restarting public life in our state. How we are going to approach reopening oregon. This is only a framework. The timing is dependent upon several factors