▪ Thirty grocery store workers share their experiences of working on the front-line during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Researcher hopes study will improve conditions for front-line workers
Most of us know what the past year as been like as a supermarket shopper, from relearning how to navigate the aisles to seeing what services retailers are pivoting to. But few understand what it’s like for grocery store workers — the people who went to work every day, wiped down the carts and baskets, restocked the shelves and ensured that customers were able to make the most of their essential outings.
Researcher Emily Duncan, a PhD candidate in the department of geography, environment and geomatics at the University of Guelph, interviewed 30 grocery store workers in the Guelph area about work since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal, she says, is to make recommendations to governments on how to improve conditions and to inform the public what it is like to toil on the front lines.
Duncan’s project, part of the university’s COVID-19 research fund, started when she noticed supermarkets had varying pandemic protocols, and she wanted to find out what worked and didn’t work for their employees (her curiosity also came from her mom working at a grocery store up until the pandemic). Duncan put out the call on social media and had store managers post flyers of her project in break rooms to interview workers. Thirty respondents — including cashiers, deli workers and bakers — shared their experiences starting last summer.
Most workers said they hoped things such as Plexiglas barriers, limited capacity and increased sanitation procedures wouldn’t be rolled back any time soon. While people thanked them for their work, they said, incidents of aggression also increased.
“Some workers recounted abuse. One worker in Guelph was spat on, people had things thrown at them,” Duncan said. “I think the stress of the pandemic made workers feel the brunt of it … People who are making sure we have access to food and that the store is clean shouldn’t have to deal with the emotional labour of the public’s distress.”
Self-checkout lanes were rarely used early in the pandemic, when people were buying weeks’ worth of groceries in one trip. People also tended to avoid them because they didn’t want to touch screens and pin pads used by others before.
“I think that’s important to note because we don’t think of these jobs at supermarkets as skilled jobs, but it does take skill to memorize the codes of produce, making sure things are rung up and bagged properly.
People didn’t want to do that themselves,” Duncan said.
Demanding as the job may be, the interviewee found that staffers didn’t take any extra unpaid time off. Workers were also confused as to why the $2 premium added to their hourly wages by large supermarket chains ended last June when the pandemic is now entering the third wave. In fact, some workers said they were making less than what recipients of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit were getting.
“What was interesting is that one grocery store only hired part-time workers, which speaks to the company not wanting to provide full-time jobs,” she said. Another store that had full-time workers opted to hire temp workers rather than give the full-timers overtime pay.
Duncan is putting together a final report on her findings and hopes that it will be available to the public by the end of the month (she also plans on sending copies to members of Parliament). She says there are three goals: ensuring grocery store workers are being prioritized in the vaccine rollout; advocating for living wages and changes to the province’s paid sick day policies; and inspiring more understanding in the general public about the challenges low-wage grocery workers continue to face.
“I hope people may take a pause and think about how they interact with people when they are in public,” Duncan said. “We put a lot of signs on our front yards thanking front-line workers, but we also need to walk the walk and be kind and patient to them.”