Kroger closes two grocery stores in California for refusing to give ‘heroes pay’ to workers

In the early days of the pandemic, people across the country flocked to grocery stores to stock up because they feared the worst. I remember rolling my wagon in my local Ralphs, on the east side of Long Beach, California, and the store was seriously chosen. The path of paper products was like a ghost town and everyone stared a thousand meters.

Everyone seems to be looking at each other and thinking, “Do they have the virus?”

My heart stopped when I got to the checkout hallway and saw the checker in a face mask with black gloves. There was a newly installed clear shield standing between us.

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I remember thinking to myself, “All these workers are going to get sick. Some will die.” I can not imagine the tension and anxiety these people felt on the front lines, especially in the early days of the pandemic. The worst part is that most had no choice. You can not just give up your job in the midst of a pandemic and hope to get new jobs.

They were all ducks.

My experience at the Ralphs on Los Coyotes Boulevard inspired me to write a headline in Upworthy that puts the idea that we should have tip jars at our supermarkets. This way we can all thank the employees for the extreme risk they take to feed our families.

Photo by Tod Perry

Eleven months later, my local Ralph’s is shut down by its parent company, Kroger, for refusing to pay $ 4 an hour for ‘hero pay’ imposed by the city. Long Beach, the second most populous city in Los Angeles County, is the first in America to increase a mandate to its grocery stores that risked everything for their work.

Kroger also includes a Food for Less in North Long Beach, a low-income neighborhood where discounted food discounts are a necessity especially in these times.

On January 19, the city council unanimously approved the 120-day hero-pay ordinance. This applies to chain stores with 300 or more workers nationally and with 15 employees per store in the city, devoting 70% or more of its business to the retail of food products.

It was signed the next day by Mayor Robert Garcia.

The ordinance comes at a time when grocery stores are making record profits as a result of the pandemic.

“Grocery workers go in every day and risk being exposed to the virus,” said Long Beach councilor Mary Zendejas. “Grocery businesses are experiencing a boom in their industry, they are making a profit, drawing profits on the shoulders of their employees, and they are not willing to share the profits with them.”

Kroger said its sales rose 30% in March and more than 20% in April and May. It also reported a 92% increase in online sales in the first quarter of 2020.

The company provided its employees with a $ 2 per hour bonus at the start of the pandemic, but it was phased out.

“Due to the decision of the City of Long Beach to adopt a regulation requiring additional payment for grocery workers, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close long-term shopping centers in Long Beach,” a company spokesman said. said a news release. “This misconduct by the Long Beach City Council goes beyond the traditional bargaining process and applies to some, but not all, grocery workers in the city.”

What’s even more troublesome is that the stores will close 89 days on April 17 within the 120-day period. Why not just wait an extra month?

Garcia vowed to fight back against Kroger’s closures because he believes it has a responsibility to compensate its workers for the extra danger they faced while the company made record profits.

“You have a business that, according to the Brookings Institution, is doubling what they normally do, they’re making the pandemic down. And they’re making it off the workers’ backs,” Garcia said in a news release. conference at the Food 4 Less location is expected to close.

‘I do not think anyone who has been shopping for up to a year in the last six months can look into the eyes of one of these workers and tell them that they are not earning an extra dollar an hour for the incredible work they have. did so during this pandemic, ‘he continued.

The pandemic is a serious topic for Garcia who lost his mother and stepfather last year due to COVID-19. His job of rolling out vaccines in the city of 467,000 was applauded by Governor Gavin Newsom and called by The New York Times a ‘model for the state’.

Kroger is obligated to close stores to avoid paying a bonus from the state. But it is bloodless of the company to thank its employees – who heroically pulled it through the pandemic – by endangering their jobs.

A report in Safety and Health found that ‘grocery store workers are five times more likely to contract COVID-19 than their colleagues who do not have direct customer contact.’

It was also found that 24% of employees in the grocery store experience at least mild anxiety related to work.

“After all the hard work I have done to feed the needy families and everything, and risk my life and my family’s lives at home, they do not want to pay $ 4 extra per hour for four small months,” said Robert Gonzales said, who has been working in the industry for 26 years and is currently working on the Food 4 Less plan to close.

“And then it’s over. What’s the reason for this? You’re going to hurt the elderly, the homeless. We give donations to homeless and needy families every week and they want to take it away,” he added.

“To ask the North Long Beach community to make a choice: work with dignity or food on the table. This is an unfair choice that the Kroger company is issuing to our community,” said Rex Richardson, deputy mayor of Long Beach, said.

Garcia says the city will fight back against Kroger in court, but it is unclear what the legal system can do to stop a business from deciding to close its doors.

In the coming months, as the number of vaccinations increases and the number of cases decreases, we will all have the pandemic era behind us. I hope I can grab my cart and one day pull in my local Ralphs and see how they put down the protective shields that stand between myself and the controller, as well as the stickers on the floor that say, ‘keep a six foot distance’

But I am very much looking forward to seeing the smiles on the faces of the checker, because for the first time in centuries they are not wearing masks. I would say to them, “Thank you, we would not have been able to do this without you.” Let’s hope that Kroger also comes to the same realization.