Christchurch, Snow, And Who Suffers/Pays?

[Perry]

Go Easy On Snowed-In Workers says PM

Fascinating series of comments after the article.
A wide range of relevant for-and-against points.

If you have more than a few minutes to while
away, do have a read. I'm interested in what PT
forumites see as the right thing to do. Given that
a one-size-fits-all approach is likely to be fraught.

[Maccachic]

Bit of a two way street if the business cant open they dont make any money either. Hard one and I dont know if the majority of employees do repay something like that back in loyalty. My two cents

[whakataka]

I lived in Wisconsin for a time in my life and we had a pretty simple rule-of-thumb: if the schools are open, and the busses are running, you're expected to make it to work. Mostly then those with kids could stay home with them.

If a business is going to try to be open despite everything else being closed, it's usually up to them to call around to the employees and find out if they can find enough staff able (willing) to brave the weather or the roads or whatever and come in. Often you'd find the owner and their kids working the shop.

Also, reliability was often rewarded. When I was there, I had a 4WD Jeep and would often be the only one in my small office to make it in before noon, and the boss definitely remembered me.

[Tan]

I have been feeling sorry for the small businesses who are no doubt struggling even more than those in the rest of NZ.
I don't think there is an insurance for this but it would solve the problem if there was.
Hopefully any businesses that can, have already set up emergency work from home systems which will ease the problem.

Now that we get 4 weeks holiday p.a., surely not many employees would grudge using some of those, and perhaps employers could offer holidays in advance if an employee had none available. This would solve the problem in many cases.

The whole situation not fair on employers or employees at the end of the day but that's life.

[Perry]

But our unworthy PM thinks employers
should be generous. (I presume so as to
match his well known and open-handed
generosity with taxpayers' money.)

Doubtless he'll have instructed the CIR
to waive any GST, or PAYE, or company
tax due for the snowed-in-days'-trading
that wasn't.

Yeah, right.