The billionaire real estate developer Charles Cohen came under fire late Tuesday for an increasingly familiar coronavirus-era maneuver. According to Page Six, he furloughed 6 of the 18 staff members at his production side project, the Cohen Media Group, and cut the pay of some of the remaining employees. Cohen also recently relaunched the society magazine Avenue with a party at the gleaming Hudson Yards. On Tuesday the tabloid cited a source who said, “While hundreds of New York restaurateurs are [trying] to pay their staff a couple weeks’ pay [in spite of the statewide shutdown], real estate tycoon Cohen had a different idea.”

Before Charles Cohen was Jeff Bezos. John Mackey, the CEO of Amazon-owned Whole Foods, suggested that employees could navigate the pandemic’s grocery store front lines by donating sick days to one another, as Motherboard reported on March 13.

On Tuesday, though, Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils part-owner Josh Harris, a billionaire private equity investor, reversed course on a plan to institute salary reductions for team staff and move to a four-day workweek. After a swift and broad outcry that included Sixers center Joel Embiid pledging $500,000 to relief efforts and saying he would help affected team employees, Harris released a statement: “After listening to our staff and players, it’s clear that was the wrong decision. We have reversed it and will be paying these employees their full salaries.”

When the NBA announced its season suspension on March 11, much of the sports world followed suit within the next 24 hours (notwithstanding the Olympics, which just announced their official postponement on Tuesday). The closure became a turning point that brought the ongoing pandemic into more immediate focus, and since then, other NBA players, including Zion Williamson, Kevin Love, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Blake Griffin, have donated money to affected arena workers, recognizing before many American big business owners and lawmakers did that hourly employees were in real peril.

League advocacy has also started primarily with the players. On Tuesday night Karl-Anthony Towns posted a video describing his mother’s hospitalization for COVID-19. “I think it’s important that everyone understands the severity of what’s happening in the world right now with this coronavirus,” Towns said, “and I think where my life is right now could help, so I decided to do this video and just give you an update of where I’m at.” As much as praise has circulated for these athletes, so have reminders of their teams’ owners’ net worths. After all, pandemic-profiting senator Kelly Loeffler, on top of everything else, co-owns the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated as it previously stated that real estate developer Charles Cohen recently purchased a $94 million mansion in Bel Air. He did not.

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