HAC, the Oklahoma company that owns Cash Saver and Homeland, is owned by employees. His chief executive, Marc Jones, said that the hero’s initial payment last year was “a reflection of the increase in people in our stores, and when that increase decreased, it seemed the appropriate time to close it down.” It was a huge expense for the company, he said, which has about 80 stores and 3,400 employees and competes with Walmart.
Even with a better-than-normal year, groceries are a “peculiarly low-profit” business, said Jones. Until March, he said, “there was a big question as to whether the local supermarket would survive and whether everyone would go online.”
Sockwell said she was more concerned about the vaccine’s delay for grocery workers, especially since her colleagues tended to work every hour they could, on a minimum wage.
“Most of my employees at the front, they barely have high school diplomas,” said Sockwell, whose local UFCW unit has been trying to get Oklahoma employees to put groceries on the vaccination priority list. “They want to do everything they can to keep food and electricity at home.”
She added: “We are manual workers who do not require a bachelor’s or master’s degree, but we are still people.”
At least 13 states have made some grocery workers eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine in at least some counties. They are Alabama, Arizona, California, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wyoming.