About 500,000 low-income workers across Massachusetts will get a $500 payment from the state government next month as the Baker administration rolls out the first phase of the first premium pay program of its type in the nation, the Executive Office of Administration and Finance announced Tuesday afternoon.
The premium pay program was created in the $4 billion COVID-19 relief law that Gov. Charlie Baker signed in December. His team has been assembling the program after he vetoed sections favored by the Legislature that would have created a 28-member panel to design the program and determine eligibility. His veto has stood.
Residents will be eligible for the payment if their 2020 income from employment was at least $12,750 (the equivalent of working 20 hours a week for 50 weeks at the 2020 minimum wage of $12.75 an hour) and their total income put them below 300% of the federal poverty level ($38,280 for a single filer). An A&F official said there will be a state website to help people determine their own eligibility but that most people would find out when they get a check in the mail. No one who received unemployment payments in 2020 will be eligible.
"I was pleased to sign the COVID-19 Essential Employee Premium Pay program into law in December, and our Administration has worked quickly to design the parameters for the program with plans to efficiently begin distribution of these payments by the end of March," Baker said. "This program will support those workers who...
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