KROGER • 10,000 workers at grocery stores surveyed
retail workers.
In Southern California, Kroger operates more than 200 Food 4 Less and Ralphs locations. Workers, made available for comment by the UFCW union, say their wages and hours are unlivable.
Jeanne Olsen, a service deli employee, takes the bus from her home in La Crescenta to the Ralphs where she works in La Cañada Flintridge. Then, at 9 p.m. after her shift ends, she walks four miles home because she can’t afford a car, she said.
Olsen, who is supporting an 18-year-old son, supplements her income through recycling, which earns her an extra $100 to $150 in a good month.
“I pick up every can, every plastic bottle that I find, and I have my family, extended family save for me and friends too,” Olsen, 59, said. “And I have to devote part of my apartment to that recycling .... But without that I would not be able to be eat.”
Olsen works six hours a day, six days a week, and makes $14.25 an hour.
“I don’t think that most of us are asking for anything more than just be paid what we’re worth, paid fairly,” Olsen said. “I shouldn’t have to struggle like I do.”
Workers’ problems have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Robin White, who worked at a Ralphs in West Los Angeles, had her hours cut in half when the pandemic hit.
She could no longer afford rent and racked up more than $1,000 on her phone bill, which eventually went to col
lections. For a while, she slept in the car with her 9year-old son, often in the parking lot at work.
Then she lost her car and moved in with her mother for a few months while trying to get it back.
“It’s a game, I guess, they play and they’ll give you an increase in pay like a dollar but then they’ll snatch hours,” White said. “So it’s like you still don’t make ends meet.”
White, 35, recently transferred to a store in Moreno Valley so she could stay with a cousin.
Workers also reported inadequate security and staffing in the stores, and a failure to enforce health standards such as social distancing and mask-wearing among customers.
Kroger is one of the largest grocery chains in the U.S. and was the 17th-largest corporation in terms of revenue in 2021.
The report was released ahead of upcoming negotiations between Kroger and the UFCW union, as the contract for roughly 33,000 workers in Southern California expires March 6. It called for
an increase in the minimum pay for workers, doubling the share of workers with full-time jobs and adding worker-elected positions to the company’s board of directors to represent unionized employees, among other recommendations.
Negotiations have not gone smoothly as contracts expire in a number of regions in the country.
Kroger workers in Oregon went on strike for a day in December 2021 before an agreement was reached. Workers in Houston authorized a strike a month before that but returned to the negotiating table before initiating it.
“Ralphs is committed to negotiating and reaching an agreement that significantly invests in our associates by putting more money in their pocket while maintaining affordable healthcare and a stable pension for retirement — a benefit that 93 percent of corporations no longer provide to their associates,” Votava said.