He paid 20 employees for a year with his restaurant closed and when it reopened 14 already had another job but were still paid

After almost a year of closure imposed by the coronavirus pandemic, cinemas in the province of Buenos Aires and the city reopened in March with social bubbles, a gastronomic service and a specific protocol that calls for individual responsibility to avoid contagion, according to two official provisions.

In this context, the entrepreneur Tito Loizeau, owner of the El Capitán cinema-themed restaurant, which works next to the Showcase cinema inside the Norcenter shopping center, in the town of Vicente López, He had an unexpected surprise as he prepared to reopen his business after nearly a year of closure due to restrictions set by the pandemic.

Of the 20 employees he had since the restaurant opened in June 2019, he recorded that in March of this year, 14 work for another employer, but they have continued to receive the salary paid to them since 2020 with state aid through the Work Assistance Program (ATP).

“After 12 months of closure due to the quarantine, the government decided to activate the cinemas. So we reopened El Capitan. 11 months’ salary for 20 people. Now I call them at work and 14 of the 20 were working elsewhere. The asshole is not what I feel !! », Posted Loizeau on the social network Twitter.

“We opened in June 2019. It’s a movie-themed restaurant like it’s 1930s Hollywood. It’s like the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles, where the Oscars were awarded, ”Loizeau said. Infobae.

In this context, he stressed that until March 10, 2020, it was doing very well but that it had already been closed for a year due to the restrictions established by the government on the activity of the cinema.

“In 10 days, we will reach a closed year. At the time, we had 20 employees. The oldest had been working for five months. The government did not allow us to fire or suspend and we entered this ATP process to pay wages. And so we were until last year when the government stopped paying ATP“, He detailed.

And he added, “Now the opening of the theaters is announced, and then I decided to summon the employees through the group of applications that we have. I summoned them and the surprise was that of the 20 employees we had, 14 work elsewhere. And I have continued to pay their salaries with state aid throughout the past year. They are not going back to work and have been working elsewhere for months, while I was paying them their wages.“.

I had no income and they made me pay a salary for 11 months. He was a living Argentinian (Tito Loizeau, owner of the El Capitán restaurant)

For the employer, the reasonable thing would have been for the employees to resign. “Nobody sent me anything and I find out why they don’t want to come to work because they are already working elsewhere,” he asked.

“I’m glad they found a job but I don’t understand why they didn’t tell me and made me pay their salary for several months when they had a job elsewhere and we were closedInsisted Loizeau.

And he explained, “I paid eleven months’ wages to some employees who worked one or two months and worked elsewhere for five months. They scammed me and they also scammed the government ”.

Regarding the decision he will take in relation to the opening or not of the restaurant in this context, he specifies that he has not yet decided.

“We have many dilemmas as to whether or not to open now. The theaters opened last week and there were very few people. This was 3% of those who went there regularly. There is also the fear of reopening and having to close in winter because of the pandemic, ”he noted.

“I had no income and they made me pay a salary for 11 months. He was a living Argentine, ”he complained. And he added that in the restaurant there is a lot of staff training which makes it difficult to reopen the business in the short term while at the same time there is the possibility of having to close it in a few months due to ‘a new wave of Covid19.

“I can find a replacement for these employees but it takes time, it forces me to open later and my terror is that winter will come and they will force us to close again. Let’s see what we’re doing these days. Our intention is to open up and the people who are here and who have stayed want to work. But if they arrested me again in three months, it could be a fatal blow. This is the situation for us today, ”he concluded.

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