These cities want to give grocery workers a risk compensation

These cities want to give grocery workers a risk compensation

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Seattle and two California cities, Long Beach and Montebello, passed laws requiring supermarkets, including chains like Kroger (KR), Albertsons, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, give their employees an extra $ 4 an hour in hazard pay. The measure in Montebello also requires drugstores like CVS (CVS) and Walgreens (WBA) to provide workers with a hazard allowance.

Union officials, labor experts and local officials say cities are interfering where the federal government and the private sector have fallen short. They hope the measures will put more pressure on large grocery stores to re-establish the payment of dangerous goods in their stores across the country and lead other cities to approve the same. legislation.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents 1.3 million workers in the food, refrigerator and freezer industries, says that at least 134 grocery workers have died of coronavirus and thousands have been infected.

“We see an increase in food purchases in supermarkets. But we have not seen a proportional increase in payment … of those who are in danger,” said Seattle city councilor Teresa Mosqueda, who introduced the city measure, in a statement. interview. “What we’ve seen is a delay in vaccination, frontline workers continue to have higher rates of exposure and contract Covid.”

Industry groups are opposed to such mandates. Ronald Fong, president of the California Grocery Association, said in an interview that the measures cities have approved will have “unintended consequences”.

“Grocery stores will have to increase the prices of consumer products in order to make these increases, or they will have to cut shifts to make the payroll,” he predicted.

Two major chains made different moves last week.

On Tuesday, Trader Joe’s said he was temporarily raising the wages of all his workers to an extra $ 4 an hour, up from the additional $ 2 an hour they had been earning from working in the pandemic. Trader Joe’s, however, is giving up planned increases to employees in the middle of the year, according to a person familiar with the company’s decision.

Earlier this week, Ralphs and Kroger-owned Food 4 Less announced they would close two stores in Long Beach. A Kroger spokesman said the stores were struggling and the closings were a result of the Long Beach City Council’s “wrong decision” to “choose winners and losers” and demand risk payment for supermarkets in the city, but not for large retailers .

“Kroger’s decision is unfortunate for workers, buyers and the company,” said Kevin Lee, a spokesman for Long Beach, in a statement.

A ‘considerable’ boss

Other risk protection measures are in progress. There are proposals in cities in California, from Los Angeles to Berkeley, to give $ 4 or $ 5 in extra pay to market workers.

But many of the mandates do not cover workers at the country’s largest retailers. Most of the measures are aimed at stores that sell mainly food, so large retailers like Walmart and Target that sell food and a wide range of products are excluded. In addition, these chains do not have stores in some of the cities where the laws have been passed or are being proposed and, therefore, are not impacted. (Los Angeles, where a proposed bill would cover not only grocery stores, but also drugstores and large cashier networks, is an exception).

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Despite the fact that some of the largest retail employers are not covered by the mandates, the $ 4 and $ 5 risky salary increases are “considerable” and will have an “immediate and positive impact on food workers in the region, “said Molly Kinder, a member of the Brookings Institution think tank, who wrote a report in November on workers’ wages at major retailers during the pandemic. For workers, the hazard premium will also have a “positive psychological benefit of recognition for the value of their work and their sacrifices,” she said.

She predicts that efforts in the cities of Seattle and California will lead to more cities and counties across the country forcing workers to be paid dangerous. But she does not expect Congress to pass similar legislation requiring hazardous payments to grocery workers.

The impetus in cities to pay for health hazards comes months after it is over for most grocery workers. In the early stages of the pandemic, large grocers like Kroger, Albertsons and Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, and Rite Aid offered their employees an additional $ 2 per hazard for attending work. Other chains, such as Walmart, CVS and Walgreens, offered cash bonuses to their employees instead of paying for dangerousness. Paying for dangerousness at these stores ended in the summer, and since then, many chains have offered their employees additional rounds of cash bonuses.

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