These cities want to pay workers in grocery stores danger

These cities want to pay workers in grocery stores danger

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Seattle and two California cities, Long Beach and Montebello, have passed laws requiring grocery stores, including chains such as Kroger (KR), Albertsons, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, give their workers an extra $ 4 per hour on payroll. The measure in Montebello also requires drug stores such as CVS (CVS) and Walgreens (WBA) to pay workers danger.

Trade union officials, labor experts and local officials say cities are stepping in where the federal government and the private sector are in short supply. They hope the measures will put more pressure on big groceries to reintroduce hazardous payments in their stores nationwide and encourage other cities to do similar law.

According to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents 1.3 million workers in the grocery, meat packaging and food industry, at least 134 coronavirus workers have died and thousands have been infected.

“We are seeing an increase in food purchases at grocery stores. But we have not yet seen a reasonable increase in compensation … for those who are harming them,” said Seattle City Councilwoman Teresa Mosqueda, who introduced the city’s measure said in a statement. maintenance. “What we have seen is a delay in vaccination, and frontline workers continue to get higher exposure and get Covid.”

Industry groups are against such mandates. Ronald Fong, president of the California Grocery Association, said in an interview that the measures taken by cities would have “unintended consequences.”

“Grocers will have to raise prices on consumer products to be able to give these increases, or they will have to cut shifts to make payroll,” he predicted.

Two large chains have made different moves over the past week.

Trader Joe’s said on Tuesday that it was temporarily increasing all workers’s to $ 4 per hour, compared to the extra $ 2 per hour they received for working in the pandemic. However, according to a person familiar with the company’s decision, Traders Joe is going to be planning to hand over the mid-year increases for employees.

Earlier this week, Ralphs and Food 4 Less, owned by Kroger, announced they would close two stores in Long Beach. A spokesman for Kroger said the stores were struggling and the closure was due to the ‘wrong decision’ by Long Beach City Council to “pick winners and losers” and pay a fee for grocery stores in the city, but not for large retailers.

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

A ‘big’ bump

Other risk payment measures are underway. There are proposals in cities in California ranging from Los Angeles to Berkeley to give $ 4 or $ 5 extra pay to grocery workers.

But many of the mandates do not cover workers at the largest retailers in the country. Most of the measures are aimed at stores that sell mainly food, so large retailers such as Walmart and Target that sell food and exclude a wide range of goods. In addition, those chains do not have stores in some of the cities where laws have been enacted or proposed, and are therefore not affected. (Los Angeles, where a proposed bill covers not only groceries but also drug stores and large box chains, is an exception).

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Despite the fact that some of the largest retail employers are not covered by the mandates, $ 4 and $ 5 risks for a large compensation are ‘significant’ and will have an “immediate, positive impact on grocery workers in the region,” says Molly Kinder, a fellow at the Brookings Institution brainstorm, who wrote a report in November on workers’ pay at top retailers during the pandemic. For workers, hazard pay will also have a “positive psychological benefit of recognizing the value of their work and their sacrifices,” she said.

She predicts that the efforts in cities in Seattle and California will lead to more cities and counties across the country paying danger to grocery workers. But she does not expect Congress to pass similar legislation requiring paychecks for grocery workers.

Momentum in cities for paychecks comes months after it ended for most grocery workers. In the early stages of the pandemic, major groceries such as Kroger, Albertsons, and Whole Foods, owned by Amazon, and Rite Aid offered their employees an extra $ 2 hazardous payment for their turnkey work. Other chains, such as Walmart, CVS and Walgreens, gave cash bonuses to their workers instead of risk payment. Danger payment at those stores ended during the summer and since then many chains have given their workers extra cash bonuses.

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