The state Department of Financial Regulation has started calling Vermont employers and urging them to apply to the state’s hazard pay program, which supplies bonuses of $1,200 or $2,000 to some of the people whose jobs put them in harm’s way during the early months of the pandemic.
“We started to notice in the first week the program was open that some major employers had not applied,” said DRF Commissioner Mike Pieciak, who is in charge of the program’s latest iteration. The $30 million program started taking applications in October and has money available still.
The fact that Walmart, which has six Vermont stores, hadn’t applied by midweek for the bonuses prompted a group of Vermont lawmakers to rebuke the chain in an open letter.
“We are extremely disturbed to learn that Walmart has indicated they will not allow their Vermont employees to receive essential worker hazard pay grants,” the Nov. 5 letter said. “Their decision, cruel under any circumstances, is especially unthinkable since the grants are intended to thank essential workers who stayed on the job in high risk positions in the earliest days of the COVID pandemic.”
Pieciak said Thursday he’d been in touch with Walmart, though he didn’t know whether they would apply. When they spoke, “the rationale they gave, it seems, was maybe they had misunderstood how the program worked,” he said.
Price Chopper, another chain that has been criticized for declining to apply, has in fact filed an application, said Pieciak. But he added he knows there are other companies, some that employ hundreds of Vermonters, that haven’t.
When reached by the DFR and encouraged to apply, “it seemed like some were hesitant to apply,” Pieciak said. “I’m assuming that’s because they didn’t fully understand the program. We’re trying to clarify any misunderstandings and get them information. At this point I think there are some still considering it.”
Walmart should be one of them, said Sens. Tim Ashe, Cheryl Hooker, Jane Kitchel, Chris Pearson and Michael Sirotkin in their letter.
“This is not a grant to Walmart; it is a grant for essential workers. Walmart merely fills out the form and passes on the grant awards to their employees,” they said. “Adding insult to injury, since eligible retail employees must earn less than $25/hour to qualify for a grant, Walmart’s decision solely disadvantages its lowest paid employees.”
Lawmakers created the first $28 million hazard pay program last summer to reward health care workers with one-time payments. In the first round, about 15,650 people who work in health care and human services received grants.
Lawmakers then expanded the program to include people who work in pharmacies, grocery stores, and some retail stores; licensed child care providers, cleaners, and several others. To qualify, apart from making $25 an hour or less, workers must have worked at a job with “an elevated risk of exposure” to Covid at least 68 hours between March 13 and May 15.
Pieciak speculated that some small employers might be unaware of the program or assume they’re not eligible.
“We took a great deal of time to make the application process as easy as possible,” he said. “It’s not a heavy lift on the employers.”
Pieciak asked Erin Sigrist, president of the Vermont Retail & Grocers Association, to call some companies that haven’t applied.
Sigrist said not all of the businesses are members of the association, “but in the spirit of cooperation and access to the grant I wanted to make sure everybody was aware of it.”
Sigrist said she doesn’t know why some companies haven’t applied, but “I know we have been inundated with several very good questions that needed clarification” about the program and how it works, she said.
