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Thai Staffing Issues Arising From the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Crisis

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai staff and this is in the context of small businesses here in Thailand or large businesses for that matter but we are basically just going to be discussing some things associated with Thai staffing issues, HR issues that are probably going to rise as this Coronavirus issue progresses and as the economic and legal ramifications of this come to the forefront as this Coronavirus threat starts to wane but we have still got to deal with the aftermath of the fall out. 

In a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com. The title: Cabinet Approves 117 Billion Baht Stimulus. I thought this was interesting. Quoting directly, they are talking about the benefits of the stimulus package:  "5,000 baht handout a month for three months for some 3 million workers not covered by the Social Security Fund. Those under the Social Security Fund will get increased unemployment compensation to 50% of salaries." that is unemployment compensation. "10,000 baht emergency loan per person at 0.1% monthly interest; no collateral." So I could see a set of circumstances, especially with Thai service staff for example in the food and beverage industry, or the entertainment industry or other industries for that matter, where they may actually resign in order to obtain unemployment benefits rather than stay on as an employee in a Company that may not be able to pay them or is paying them less etc. 

It remains to be seen all the ramifications exactly of how all this will work out, but I think that there could be substantial ramifications on this especially for foreign Nationals doing business here in Thailand as for standard smaller companies there is a ratio of 4:1 employees in order to maintain a Thai Work Permit and having a bunch of mass resignations or needing to lay people off could have implications for Thai Work Permit maintenance. 

We will get into that specifically in another video but for purposes of this video, I just wanted to bring up the issue because there may be some small business owners that are wondering "why is everyone resigning from the company on mass while all of this is going on?" There are certain Social Security benefits that may accrue to those folks depending on their circumstances and under their circumstances they may do a cost-benefit analysis and determine that resigning their job may be better for them under the circumstances than keeping it in an uncertain future.