KCUR: Employees In Some Industries Face Risking COVID-19 Or Losing Their Jobs And Benefits

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When Joshua Williams, 28, was told on May 5 that he would be expected back at work in the downtown Kansas City, Missouri, office building where he's a janitor, the reopening was earlier than he was comfortable with.

“It seems like we’re a pawn,” Williams says. “It seems like we’re just moving on someone else’s terms, and we’ve gotta take the fall however the fall comes.”

Williams, who returned to work on May 11, says he’s concerned about contracting the coronavirus and potentially transmitting it to his community and his home, where he lives with his wife and two children, a son who’s 8, and a daughter who’s 3.

He has been collecting unemployment benefits since he was furloughed on March 25, and under federal and state law, such benefits end when an employer calls employees back to work.