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Alan Brunet, pictured, has been working as a bartender at a steakhouse based in Morristown, N.J. for nearly 20 years. He was called back to work there in June but business has been sluggish.
Alan Brunet
When restaurants in New Jersey were allowed to reopen in mid-June for outdoor dining, Alan Brunet, 59, jumped at the opportunity to return to his customers. A bartender for nearly 20 years, he’s grown so close to some of the people he serves that he considers them family, he said.
But to his disappointment, few, if any of them, have been showing up.
“I’m going back to work for basically $7 an hour,” Brunet, who works at a steakhouse in Morristown, N.J., said. He frequently finds himself “staring at walls” during his shifts.
He was hired back to work two days a week, making roughly 25% of his wages before the pandemic. But he’s been able to still collect weekly unemployment benefits because he was laid off entirely from his prior part-time job as a waiter.
Before he was called back to work he collected $416 from his state’s unemployment program and an additional $600 in federal unemployment benefits. The extra $600 is mandated by the $2.2 trillion CARES Act stimulus package that lawmakers passed in early April.
“ ‘I’m going back to work for basically $7 an hour’ ”
“If I was pressed to live on $416 a week without the extra $600 I’d be in trouble,” Brunet, whose wife is unable to work and collects disability insurance, said.
“Her prescription bills are off the chart,” he said of his wife, who’s been diagnosed with lupus, which makes her particularly vulnerable to coronavirus.
When he does work, the amount he gets in state unemployment benefits is reduced based on the amount of money he makes in a given week. Typically he’s been making no more than $200 a week and has been able to collect $850 total in unemployment benefits, $250 of which come from the state.
But if lawmakers fail to act before the end of this month to extend the extra $600 in weekly federal benefits, he’ll be living on just $450 a week.
That would make it impossible for him to afford his health insurance, which is costing him $516 a month. “Then I’ll have to sell my house,” he said.
As it stands, there are four major proposals that could potentially replace the extra $600 in unemployment benefits, two of which would allow unemployed Americans to receive additional funds on top of state benefits. Another calls for capping the benefits at an amount equivalent to a worker’s prior wages. One calls for just the opposite of unemployment benefits — a return-to-work bonus.
Brunet said he would be able to earn more working if restaurants in New Jersey were allowed to offer indoor dining, which was slated to happen under the state’s original reopening plans. But New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy hit the pause button on indoor dining, allowing restaurants to only offer outdoor dining, which health experts say is safer.
“ ‘I want to go back to work because there’s always a chance of making more money than what I used to make — there’s good weeks and bad weeks. But now there are just bad weeks.’ ”
Because of outdoor capacity constraints, the steakhouse where Brunet works is only able to serve a maximum of eight tables at a given time. Inside the restaurant, Brunet said, there are more than 50 tables.
Even though the indoor section of the restaurant would have been subject to strict capacity constraints under the state’s reopening guidelines, indoor dining would have given Brunet the opportunity to directly serve customers at the bar.
Because customers aren’t allowed to come to the bar “the tips are gone,” he said. “I’ll make a little bit from the servers and that’s about it.”
“I want to go back to work because there’s always a chance of making more money than what I used to make — there’s good weeks and bad weeks. But now there are just bad weeks.”
“I don’t want a handout,” Brunet said. “I don’t want anything but the whole world to go back to normal.”
