NE Nashville News

Aman Habtezion, an auditor with the parking and driving company Premier Parking, is currently unemployed and stuck at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The coronavirus is affecting my ability of living by making me sit at home and earn no money." Habtezion told NE Nashville News. "Since I am the breadwinner of my family, that makes it hard."

While he's at home, Habtezion thinks about when he will get back to work, whether Premier Parking will still be there to take him back and how he'll pay his bills in the interim. 

Premier Parking COO William Clay

"If this goes on for too long, I am afraid I will not be able to pay my mortgage," he said.

Habtezion said he feels that government should step up and offer assistance.

"I think the state and the federal government can help by helping the company to stand on its feet again," he said. "That way, all the employees, all of us can get back to work as our source of income is from this company."

What Habtezion would like most of all "is for everything to come back as it was so that I can get back to my beautiful and wonderful job." 

Premier Parking would like that, too, but the company is also doubtful of its future.

Earlier this week Premier Parking COO William Clay called for more help to start flowing to his industry, hard hit by the economic free fall wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The phase III stimulus package, which included extended unemployment benefits, passed by the U.S. House and Senate last week, likely will help most of Premier Parking's furloughed employees but the company also is struggling, Clay said.

"We are asking that the parking industry [NAICS 812930] be recognized as an industry in need of assistance, and we are asking for business interruption insurance to be granted to our company [and others like us] in this time of great need," Clay told Tennessee Business Daily.

Premier Parking employs more than 2,000 associates in more than 600 locations in more than 40 cities across the nation, in no small part providing services at concerts, sports activities and other events.

Those events now are postponed or canceled, drying up Premier Parking's business as the company's customers are largely stuck at home waiting out the crisis. That has lead to the furloughing of hundreds of Premier Parking's employees.

"[The coronavirus] has caused devastation to our company and to our family of employees as we've been forced to lay off hundreds of employees over the past two weeks," Clay said. "This has been the most difficult two weeks of my professional life. Revenues are down 90-plus percent across the board as most CBDs are shelter-in-place and employees are working from home."

The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was starkly illustrated last week when the U.S. Labor Department reported that a record-breaking 6.6 million signed up last week for unemployment benefits.

The majority of Premier Parking's workforce are in field operations, including valet drivers at hotels, also shut down by the crisis, and shuttle bus drivers for hotel employees who also have been largely furloughed.

"Through no fault of their own their lives have been turned upside down, Clay said. "They lost a steady job with a reliable paycheck and are facing repercussions that may seem insurmountable for many.”