Cottrell – Important Announcement – UPDATE 5/8/2020 Due to the fluid nature of events, Cottrell will not be working a normal production schedule until further notice. However, critical employees will be contacted by their direct supervisor and asked to report to work. If you have not been directly contacted by your supervisor then you are not scheduled to work and will be on partial layoff until further notice. Please check back here for regular updates. Unemployment for all employees not scheduled to work will be filed for them by the company. Screening of All Employees For those employees scheduled to report to work, Cottrell has implemented a 100% screening policy, meaning that every employee that comes into the facility is going to have their temperature checked. If their temperature is below 100 degrees F, (37.8 degrees C), then they will be allowed to work. If their temperature is above 100 degrees F, then they will be asked to go home and not to return to retest until they have been fever free for 72 hours. Screeners will report at 6:00 a.m. so that they can be screened and put into position. The front gate will open at 6:30 a.m. to start screen all other employees that are permitted to gain access that day. PLEASE BE AWARE THAT RUNNING THE HEATER IN YOUR CAR PRIOR TO HAVING YOUR TEMPERATURE CHECKED COULD CAUSE AN ELEVATED READING. PLEASE TURN YOUR HEATERS OFF BEFORE YOU ARRIVE AND GIVE YOURSELF A CHANCE TO COOL DOWN SO THAT WE CAN GET AN ACCURATE TEMPERATURE READING. ALSO, PLEASE DO NOT DRINK ANY HOT DRINKS LIKE COFFEE PRIOR TO HAVING YOUR TEMPERATURE CHECKED. Unemployment Payment Issues The single biggest problem we were having is Partial vs. Permanent Unemployment. When someone is on Partial Layoff, they still work for the company, they just have been temporarily laid off due to lack of work. When someone is Permanently Laid Off, they are completely separated from the company. The company is required to file all Partial Unemployment claims for everyone who is still employed by the company. However, the company is not allowed to file unemployment claims for anyone who was Permanently Laid Off. The problem has been that the Department of Labor (DOL) has been taking so long paying claims for permanent unemployment. After trying for several weeks, we have finally been able to get in touch with someone at the Department of Labor that understands this issue and has actually given us a workable solution. The DOL stated that the biggest problem is that it takes up to 3 week to pay out an individual claim for Permanent Unemployment. The problem has been made extremely worse because over 1,000,000 Georgians have made individual claims for unemployment. That has overwhelmed the system and is causing delays longer than 3 weeks. That means that the DOL has not paid almost any individual unemployment claims yet. Cottrell has been given permission to now include all of the people we have Permanently Laid off on our Partial Unemployment claims. They said this will speed up the process significantly. We are going to amend all of the Partial Unemployment claims we have already filed to now include everyone who we Permanently Laid off. We will amend all of the claims we have filed and all the people who were Permanently Laid Off will start receiving their money soon. Again, this is against their normal rules but the DOL has given us permission to do it this way to speed up the process and get money into the hands of our people as soon as possible. Like I said, we are in the process of amending all of those claims. We will work on this through the weekend and get the amendments to the DOL as soon as possible. Our people should start receiving checks shortly after that process is complete. Please be aware, if you have filed an individual claim and already received a check, the DOL will not pay you twice for the same week. Their process only allows for one check to be issued for each week claimed. If you already received a check then you will not receive a second check. If you have any questions after logging into your account, please contact Alyssa Katz at akatz@cottrelltrailers.com or by phone at 770-532-7251 ext. 229. Christmas Club Anyone wishing to cancel their Christmas Club contributions this year and get a refund of the balance in their current Christmas Club account can email Tanoa Turner at tturner@cottrelltrailers.com to ask for a refund of their Christmas Club account. If they don’t have access to email, then they can ask their supervisor to send an email for them.