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It's a lovely day.
I'd say you'd imagine that the bar would impact David Clarke can't believe what's happening.
He's worried his whole livelihood is about to disappear.
It's surreal.
We're gonna have to wrap up the bar for the foreseeable future.
So all the taps are empty right now.
Nothing as millions face unemployment tonight, stories from some of the first to be hit hard.
Those in the service industry were more than seven million.
Workers are facing lost wages, unemployment, even bankruptcy.
Copa nineteen's an economic tsunami from hotel workers.
I'm a single mom of tree.
I really don't know what I'm gonna use to put food on the table to restaurant servers was laid off just recently.
Small business owners, because we do work on tips, a lot of us are left with little to no income.
Most of us don't have a huge cushion to fit on their industry scrambling to adapt after at least 20 states have closed restaurants and bars to dining, customers do the pickup.
Is there another creative way to reach people?
A ticking clock as covert 19 continues to tighten its grip.
All the lights are coming on today as the number of workers applying for unemployment skyrocketed, Washington passed a new relief plan.
The center is not going to leave small business for the workers.
The stimulus package is supposed to help its assistance they desperately need.
But it may not be enough.
We have seen dramatic layoffs in our industry.
You know, we represent workers in hotels, casinos, restaurants, bars, stadiums, arenas and virtually everything has closed.
Wendy Walsh works for Unite Here, a labor union that represents 300,000 working people from across North America.
Many of our workers work two or three jobs and are now laid off from all of those jobs.
Many of their members are immigrants, women of color who are already vulnerable in San Francisco, where the city's under lock down housekeeper Larra Lou Corumba, a single mother of three, hasn't worked in two weeks.
We're just here in the room.
My daughter is just, uh, finish her brutal glasses, and my son also just finished his homework.
Any kind of help from the government is really for the workers first, because we really needed she hopes her employer, a major hotel chain, will allow them more paid sick time.
We shouldn't have lost our health insurance, especially in times of this, that everybody's skating seek to help fill in the gaps.
In Los Angeles, local nonprofits are hosting a food bank for the Unite Your members.
I think this really is a moment where we should ask ourselves as airlines air going to the federal government for toe ask for billions of dollars in bailout money.
How is it possible that the food service workers who are preparing the food for those planes don't have access to affordable health care?
This is just a moment that really highlights was already broken in the country, and this has to be the time to fix it.
Small business owners are feeling the burn to your bar is completely empty.
What does that feel like?
It's a good feeling.
It's a horrible feeling.
Tom Coburn is one of the owners of Cooper's, a pub in New York City's East Village forced to close amid a temporary ban on restaurants and bars, life altering not just for Tom, but his staff of 35 people.
How did you break the news to your employees?
We just told him straight out.
Whatever.
They came into work that very, very unfortunate.
But there wasn't anything we could do about it.
And how did they react?
They were shocked.
A lot of them.
There were some of them.
I see the writing on the wall because from other places that are already closed.
But I'm many of them are.
They were shocked yesterday would have been one of the bars biggest days of the year celebrating ST Patrick's Day.
But now the general manager, Nelson Rivermen Ada, is trying to figure out what happens next.
So what are you gonna d'oh while the bar's closed?
Uh, heaven, I'm probably gonna fire for unemployment for the time being, right at the moment, just helping my co workers filling their unemployment files.
Are you worried for you and your co workers?
Yeah.
Yes, I am.
Ah, feel them.
I don't really have.
Like, the stability on is I don't know.
I wish I can do more for them, But you just seem limited as well.
I'm gonna be doublet.
I am jobless now.
So small businesses are critical to the economy.
They employ nearly half of all Americans.
It'll be unearth quake, A financial earthquake for half of all Americans.
if small businesses don't get the help that they need very soon.
All right, just put it in the kitchen, George.
And then we'll feel with that later.
Many restaurants and bars air trying to stay afloat by offering takeout and delivery like Angela Marsden in L.
A.
We have so many loyal customers, and they're all calling to see how we're doing.
Hey, Dan, are you?
It's a ensure you coming out.
Are you guys ordering today?
Because we are open?
I just want to let you know.
But making that transition is difficult for businesses that are built on bringing people together.
Miss Barr has been here since 1978 and, um, it means a lot to me and to people of the neighborhood day.
One of her new normal was not encouraging.
You know, it's I don't know, almost five o'clock and we're open from 11 8 and we only have $140 in sales.
And that doesn't even cover the two people that were trying to keep, you know, employed today.
Things are a little bit better.
Thanks guys of you.
Thank you, Dan.
By with a slight uptick in takeout sales big question now does anybody know what the long term effects on the economy will be?
The's stock market dropping again today and even temporarily halting trading experts fear were spiraling into another recession.
The stock market is saying recession economists, including myself, are saying, Yeah, we're in recession.
The Senate is hoping that the multibillion dollar emergency aid package they passed today, which expands paid emergency, leave food security programs and bolsters unemployment insurance, will help.
Now lawmakers air focused on the next step a $1 trillion stimulus plan, which includes $500 billion in direct payments to the public, 50 billion to bail out the airline industry and 300 billion for small business loans.
$1000.
$2000 check.
Maybe that's the start.
See how it goes?
Uh, the virus let last for longer than more money.
But some say Washington needs to get even more aggressive and soon waiting to pay rent Another mother.
We need to feel herself.
We need toe Jenna daily expenses in the long term.
I don't know.
We still need to get a job.
We're still need to get back on your feet.
Do you think you can make it through this?
I don't know.
He hope.
I hope.
Yeah, I don't know if I can make it, but I will do my best.
Like I've been lucky.
Have had some loyal customers.
Stop in.
Um, I have some lawyers from the courthouse there.
They've been faithful.
They've ordered every day, so hopefully they'll still order today.
But we'll see our thanks to Diane Macedo.
And now I want to turn to our next guest, Holly Kennington from Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Holly's a single mom who used to work as a bartender until two weeks ago, as news of the virus was spreading, she had to make a gut wrenching choice between her job and her son's safety.
He's immuno compromised with a life threatening brain disease.
I spoke to her earlier tonight.
Holly.
First of all, thanks for joining us.
Clearly, Cove, it made it impossible for you to keep working.
I know you don't see it as a choice between a paycheck and your son, and yet that was your choice.
That what?
That was my choice.
And I would absolutely make it over again.
This past week, the governor of our state has made it a mandate that all bars and restaurants are takeout only.
So it's not just me that's lost their job.
Are we going to have a job when we go back or not?
And I know that for you, your job isn't just a paycheck.
It's your community, these air, your friends.
It's the only slice of adult normal wife that is left.
I'm somewhat used to isolation now.
It could be a struggle, you know, today in Congress, they were arguing over.
Should we send $1000 to every American for relief?
What could you do with that money?
I could pay my car insurance for several months.
Um, I could pay rent, but $1000?
Be honest.
Not a whole lot in terms of Brent as dark as her life can feel.
Sometimes today she got just a little bit of sunshine, a regular customers banding together, rounding up over $120.
A coworker drove over an hour just to drop it off in her mailbox.
That was a lot of twenties in that tip jar for you.
What was it like when you saw that money that your regulars wanted to deliver to you.
I don't know.
How do we explain?
Um, soothing.
It is comforting and relieving.
And right now, when you wake up and go to bed afraid every day in a bit of relief you're granted is something worth thinking that for as a mom, it's really scary to know that there's nothing you can do.
Um, with Corona virus, I actually have something that I can do that keep him.
I saluted and it gives me a little bit of ownership over.
It gives you a little control.
Yeah, Thanks again, Holly.
I can't thank you enough for joining us.
As I say you are in our hearts.
Be well, hang tight and we'll be throughout you.
Hi, everyone.
George Stephanopoulos here.
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