Covid Benefits for reduced work

The scheme you are talking about is this one

Employer COVID-19 Refund Scheme

This scheme is operated by Revenue and it only applies to employees that have not been ceased from employment. The payment of 203 is process through the normal payroll and it is the employer that is operating the payments.

If an employee has been ceased from employment then you need to deal with DEASP not Revenue and the employer has nothing to do in that event. Once the employee is ceased is no longer in employment, Social Welfare deals with it.

This information is not exactly dealing with your query as this is a new scheme that has been brought forward due to the circumstances. The idea is to avoid sending people into welfare and have a sudden increase of unemployment (not to speak of an overload of work for Welfare), it is supposed to help temporarily business so that they don´t need to bring redundancies and keep employees in their jobs. The economy will pick up once this is over and this is something to help business to go through (mostly small business that do not have reserves) until things get better.

Important to notice that the PRSI class that needs to be entered is J9. That PRSI class does not provide entitlement to State Contributory Pension, and it might need to be considered by certain people in need of a certain level of contributions. For instance it might help people with more that 10 years of contributions to know that they can apply to make voluntary contributions to cover for any missing ones during this period.

This is relevant for businesses more than employees. If you are an employee and you have been ceased (appeared as such in Revenue records) you need to deal with Welfare and not Revenue.

And in any case this a very, very rough guide for it (an introduction to it basically)

Also.... on the weeks off can an employee ask to get some Holidays thrown int9 bring up his weekly wage.....??

Also .... is legal to allow an employee work 7 days in a row (7 x 8 hrs = 56 hrs) one week and get paid 56 hrs and be off a full 7 days next week and just get the €203 in week 2. The average of the 2 weeks payment might be somewhat close to his normal weekly wage...???

Masala wrote: »

Also.... on the weeks off can an employee ask to get some Holidays thrown int9 bring up his weekly wage.....??

Also .... is legal to allow an employee work 7 days in a row (7 x 8 hrs = 56 hrs) one week and get paid 56 hrs and be off a full 7 days next week and just get the €203 in week 2. The average of the 2 weeks payment might be somewhat close to his normal weekly wage...???

The only people working 56 hr right now would be essential workers such as doctors, nurses, gardai, supermarket employees, supply chain, etc. Those employees would not work one week and them be off the next, and I very much doubt they will be entitled to this scheme as they are not affected by temporary lay offs.

It will be very difficult to explain that you have an employee working 56 hours non-stop one week and the next week you want to it to not work anything and go into this scheme. This is for business genuinely affected by this circumstances that are trying to keep their employees in employment and right now cannot.

How can you have an employee working 56 hr one week and not the other?
Are you going to have them that way one week 56 hr, the next none?
Was it one week and from the second week they have no hours?

These are the questions Revenue will want know.

This is for genuine cases people, there is going to flexibility, but please help them to deal with genuine cases okay?

ForestFire wrote: »

Thanks again, just to clarify, I am an employee not an owner.

For the sake of this discussion, say the company is a major international company that has both production, r+d and support staff, and company sales are affect by this crisis (consumer electronics)

These are some of the suggestions currently being proposed, and company will apply each to diffent groups within the company, depending on the needs of that department, I. E. Production or RandD etc., and/or current projects your assigned, I. E. Critical, none critical.

So will the company, with justification, be able to avail of this payment for all scenarios?

It depends of the activity the company. It is more complicated than it looks from the way you have made the question, as it is going to depend on many, many variables such sector, number of employees, location of company, location of customers, how their customers are affected at the moment, etc

First the company would need to consider the number of employees working on premises.
They will need to know how much the activity levels are going to drop taking into account current drop
How many employees can work from home?
What employees are essential for the company and the company activities right now?

And many, many more things. Once you have an idea of the effects of this situation for the company, you can have an idea of where to start and how you can make your case to Revenue. Revenue would prefer to pay less using this scheme, but they are going to be aware that people are going to take advantage of the scheme, so you are literally going to make a case of why you want the scheme one way and not other and you are going to need back up information for it. The payroll department and the accountants for the company could provide all the information for this and they are the best suited to answer the question.

• R&D department their numbers is going to depend on the viability of the R&D they are doing, can it be delayed or does it need to keep going because it cannot be stopped? Can they continue to work from work? etc
• Production, the main issues here are the number of people working in production and how effective social distances can be kept along with how affected production levels are (customers could easily be cancelling orders right now), etc
• Sales are they working on site or travelling to clients sites. Can they work remotely? Again how production levels are affected should be considered and so on
• Admin, can they work from home?

With the information you have provided the possible solutions and alternatives could easily be infinite. Revenue will be flexible, but for them to be flexible they will want to see a solid and well reasoned plan, based on good information and the company accounts. Estimates more than likely be considered but I assume they will want to check those estimates once this is over to check that they have helped the right people.

They are not going to want a huge amount of information that needs weeks to be prepared right now, but something reasonable and fair. They want to deal with this fast.

My guess is that a quick, well prepared query to them will be a good start and they are going to be the best prepared to answer it. If not they will lead you to Welfare as employees not covered by this Scheme will be more likely than not, covered by a Welfare Scheme.

Masala wrote: »

If looking at 50 employees—— this could half the wage bill and keep employees monies up. 25 will work this week and keep production going on reduced hours of 8 hrs a day. The other 25 are unpaid. Next week—— swap over the staff and do it all again. There is not enough work for the all of the employees on a 2 on and 2 off roster that was running 16 hour days. This way the company can help the employees maximize their wages

Otherwise—— just lay off half of the employees and run the place on skeleton staff.

First of all if you have 25 employees per week working 8 hours seven days per week, you need more than 25 working that week. It is very unfair to put in a situation where they need to work every day of the week. We can go here about the dangers of overtime from the health point of view that are very relevant right now (working excessively many days in a row tends to affect your immune system, something that most people would prefer it works well right now).

From the ethical point of view is very unethical that you want to pay some employees overtime and not others and them take help money from the government to maximise wages.

And from the accounting and economic point of view it makes not sense for the company to pay overtime and extra rates on a weekly basis for 25 employes when you can very easily avoid it, if you need to reduce hours due to a fall in activity.

The system is design to avoid temporary layoffs, not to maximise people's wages. The money that is being used right now for that is going to be recoup via taxes later on, so people should consider how this whole trying to maximise things is going to affect us down the road.

If you need genuine help talk with Revenue with providing them good reasons about your situation.

You get paid less than €203 pw? That's mental

Gamer Bhoy 89 wrote: »

You get paid less than €203 pw? That's mental

That is the Thatcherite/Republican/FF/FG view of the world: gig economy, zero hours contracts and tax incentives for vulture funds and REITS.
keep safe and well