Whole Foods hit by worker sickout

Better safeguards and pay sought for those on front lines of virus.

A group of Whole Foods Market employees across the country called in sick Tuesday in an effort to press the Amazon.com Inc.owned grocery chain to provide more safety protections and higher pay for those in jobs with a higher potential exposure to the coronavirus.

Leaders of the protest are pushing for paid leave for all workers who self-quarantine, hazard pay that would double store workers’ current hourly wage over the course of the crisis, more sanitation supplies and social-distancing policies, and free coronavirus testing for workers. If a worker tests positive, they want the store where the employee works to be closed immediately and remain closed while all other employees at that location are tested.

This month, after an employee at a Whole Foods in Huntington Beach tested positive for the virus, the company said it did “additional cleaning and disinfection.” One of the sickout organizers, who works at a store in Orange County, said that wasn’t enough.

Employees “are scared to come in,” said the worker, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation. “We didn’t really ask to be at the front lines of this pandemic.”

Successfully negotiating some of these demands will get people to feel it’s safe enough to go back to work, the employee said.

It’s unclear how widespread participation in the sickout has been.

A Whole Foods Market spokesperson said in a statement that the company has not seen an operational effect from the sickout.