When the COVID-19 pandemic first led to a closure of business, schools and other public gathering spaces, Rod Dion did something many employers couldn’t do: He kept all his employees.
“One of the best and hardest decisions I did was to not let anybody go,” he said during an interview at Tech Valley Office Interiors in Cohoes. “It was not easy.”
And while the tight labor market is a little easier for him as a result, Dion nevertheless is being hit with a surcharge to help pay New York state’s multi-billion dollar unemployment insurance debt to the federal government.
“As a business owner in New York state, I did everything I was supposed to do and yet my reward is to be punished by this potential surcharge for each employee I have,” he said.
Dion is among the business owners in New York who are being asked to shoulder the weight of the more than $7 billion owed to the federal unemployment insurance fund. As the ranks of the jobless swelled in the early weeks of the pandemic, New York borrowed from the fund to cover the cost of benefits.
New York is now among a handful of states to still owe money to the fund.
And while business groups have urged state officials to step in, state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie on Monday said it’s the federal government that needs to act.
“The pandemic wasn’t a New York state pandemic, it was a national pandemic,” Heastie said. “So to ask New York state to reimburse the feds for a national pandemic, I believe the federal government should eat this expense and it should not be borne onto the businesses in the state of New York.”
But Dion believes it’s Albany that should be finding ways to alleviate costs for businesses with the unemployment insurance mess.
“It’s just kicking the can to someone else now instead of doing what they should be doing,” he said. “Honestly, if they just did their jobs, none of this would be needed.”
Dion loves owning a business and has invested in his hometown. But he wishes the state made things easier for employers.
“I still think people should open their own businesses, I think there’s something wonderful about that,” he said. “But New York state is the big leagues. They don’t make it easy.”
Employers urge NY to fix unemployment insurance surcharge & Latest News Update
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