April 2020

Avera finally announces their furloughs

l3wis April 17, 2020 42Comments

A few weeks ago I got beat up for this post. The story today only verified what I was hearing back than;

Avera Health has furloughed approximately 650 employees across its system and reduced hours for about 1,500 staff members as the financial and operational implications of COVID-19 take hold.

This was the ‘big announcement’ I was talking about. I couldn’t give the full announcement because I had not heard the details of how many people it would be. So while I didn’t have all the details, I did know this was happening. Avera obviously drug their feet as long as they could before telling people. Sanford said today they are trying to avoid a furlough thru crosstraining they are doing now, but it may still happen. I apologize, but sometimes these stories tend to take a little bit longer to come out.

Mayor TenHaken looking to pull his stay at home ordinance

He announced at the 2 PM meeting today he wanted to pull back on the ordinance and just have a continuation of the loitering ordinance.

“Our current stay-at-home order needs to pivot based on today’s data,” he said. “I feel that the measures we still have to take in our city to further flatten our curve can be enhanced through enhanced regulations in our no-lingering ordinance and not in a stay-at-home order.”

So what was the real reason he wanted to do this? Because at least 6-7 councilors already told his COS that they were voting it down. I would even go further and say that by Tuesday it would probably be an 8-0 vote.

I’m sure PTH was trying to save himself any embarrassment from the complete failure of his proposed ordinance. The irony though is that most of the council is against it because they think in infringes on civil liberties, in which it does not, it actually does nothing at all but make a strong suggestion. It was a great exercise in futility and little else.

Some councilors threw around the idea of limiting employee in businesses or at least setting strong guidelines. I think this is good.

Councilor Stehly even pointed out they are already limiting restaurants from opening, so how would it be any different. The difference is MONEY and Greed.

As we can see from this BBC story, Smithfield did ignore the warning signs;

But according to Smithfield employees, their union representatives, and advocates for the immigrant community in Sioux Falls, the outbreak that led to the plant closure was avoidable. They allege early requests for personal protective equipment were ignored, that sick workers were incentivised to continue working, and that information regarding the spread of the virus was kept from them, even when they were at risk of exposing family and the broader public.

These larger employers that are ignoring advice from the CDC on how to slow the spread are the reason this is spreading so quickly now in our community. The problem is the Feds are protecting these companies and even worse yet, we live in a right to work state where employers really can treat their employees like dirt and there is no repercussions. Believe it or not, it’s hard for our local government to do anything legally to get these bad actors to knock it off. Their hands are tied. But I also want to say, they are not doing enough to put on the pressure. I watched an almost 4 hour meeting this afternoon that consisted of one excuse after another and no real solution of how they are going to get these large employers to limit their work forces. Just be happy you don’t work in one of these places, because it’s not a matter of if you will get sick but when.

The council really needs to explore ways in which they can legally get into these larger businesses and get them to follow important safety procedures.

This virus has shown us an entire breakdown of leadership from DC on down and no one willing to make life saving difficult decisions.