Hair Salon Owners Petition To Be Considered Essential Coronavirus Business
BOSTON (CBS) – A petition calling for Massachusetts hair salons to be considered essential coronavirus businesses in order to let them reopen early has received thousands of signatures.
As of now, salons are part of the non-essential business shutdown, scheduled to lift May 4.
Dawn Desrosiers, owner of Hair For You in Hubbardston, started the petition.
"It's a small town, so I've grown lovely clientele," she said. "I miss them, they miss me."
Desrosiers wants hair salons to be able to do a soft opening next week.
"I think if the governor set up ways we could do it, I think my salon is much cleaner than any Walmart, Market Basket, grocery store at this point," she said.
Desrosiers said she believes proper safety measures would be easy for salons to enact by allowing one client per stylist at a time, wearing masks and cleaning all services between clients.
Boston salon owner Marc Harris took to Facebook to offer a different perspective. In his post, Harris slammed stylists who are still meeting with clients, saying all services have been shut down.
"Those of you who are going to private homes and providing services are part of the reason why the rest of us will remain shuttered. Your selfish behavior is cutting the legs out from under the professionals who are abiding by the rules!" Harris wrote.
He ended the post with "together we survive."
Gov. Charlie Baker said during a press conference Wednesday that there would be rules and review processes for hair salons to reopen.
"Close contact operations like that one would be one of the ones that would have to go through some sort of review to figure out if in fact you can create the kind of safety for people that would be required for both the person delivering the haircut, and the person and the person getting it," he said.
Baker said it is too soon to decide such things.
"We need to be on the other side of the curve before we do any of this stuff, and then the question becomes what are going to be the rules, how are they going to work," he said.
Desrosiers said she understands that salons aren't necessarily essential, she is just confident that they could safely reopen.
"I have lots of friends that own salons, we've been communicating, figuring out how we're gonna survive and not lose our small businesses," she said.
As for the petition, it has more than 7,000 signatures.
