Here’s an article about some of the effects in San Francisco.
Thomas personally laid off 52 employees at her two Cow Hollow establishments, Rose’s Cafe and Terzo, and she said other restaurants in the city let go of tens of thousands of workers. She wishes the city had chosen to follow the state’s lead and this would have given restaurants at least two additional weeks to operate, resulting in at least an extra $1,300 in the pockets of minimum wage workers.
“It was unfortunate that it had to happen before the state,” said Thomas on Tuesday. “I understand that we’re all in this together. But as of today, there’s 36% capacity in San Francisco. I understand the importance of public health, but I’m not a fan of all of our workers, tens of thousands of them in the bar, the cleaning companies, the linen companies, losing their jobs. What we did is we just grounded the whole S.F. economy to a halt, probably two weeks earlier than we had to.”
I hope when the dust settles a bit, local governments will figure out a way to assess the impacts of their measures and find a way to help those who bore the brunt of them.