Citing pandemic peril, grocery workers stay out in protest
Grocery and delivery workers are holding strikes and walkouts this week as concerns over dangerous work conditions during the covid-19 pandemic intensify.
Some workers at Whole Foods Market stores across the U.S. called in sick on Tuesday, part of a coordinated action to demand more sick pay and protections for grocery store employees.
Some Instacart and Amazon warehouse workers walked off the job Monday demanding greater safeguards against the coronavirus, even as both companies are speed-hiring hundreds of thousands of new workers to handle a surge in delivery orders.
Many workers in high demand are part-time or contracted employees, lacking in benefits such as paid sick time off or health care. In addition to demands for more protection against coronavirus, workers are citing longstanding grievances over practices that keep wages low and part-time workers from getting more hours.
Online grocery-delivery service Instacart and Amazon say they are working to equip their workers with sanitation gear and have taken steps to increase pay and extend paid sick time.
Instacart said Sunday that it would make hand sanitizer available to its workers upon request and outlined changes to its tip system, but strikers said it was too little too late.
It’s unclear how many people participated in the Whole Foods “sickout.” An organizer said no estimate was available, and a Whole Foods spokeswoman didn’t provide a tally, but said the strike hadn’t disrupted op
erations.
Bloomberg News interviewed workers in five states, from Illinois and Texas to the Eastern Seaboard, who say they joined colleagues calling in sick. They cite as reasons for participating fear of contracting or spreading the disease to family members and disputes with managers about appropriate measure to protect themselves, among other things.
One Whole Foods worker in the Chicago area who joined the strike on Tuesday said working at the grocer felt like a public service a few weeks ago, when aisles were full of shoppers buying in a panic. But as business slowed to a more normal level — and the virus spread to communities across the country — the employee no longer thinks that going to work is worth the risk.
“It’s really hard for people to stay safe,” the employee said. “Workers are being forced to choose between their safety and the safety of their loved ones and being able to pay their bills.”
The worker spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from her employer.
Organizers of the Whole Foods action have circulated a petition signed by more than 10,500 people asking for paid leave for all workers who choose to isolate themselves, health care coverage for part-time employees and funds to cover testing and treatment of sick team members. Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, in January stopped providing health care benefits for part-time employees who work less than 30 hours a week.
The upscale grocer has rolled out temporary raises of $2 an hour through April, increased overtime compensation, and says employees
placed in quarantine or diagnosed with covid-19 are eligible for two weeks of paid sick leave, policies in place throughout Amazon’s workforce. Rachel Malish, a Whole Foods spokeswoman, on Tuesday pointed to those actions and others the company says it’s taking to safeguard employees. “So far today we have seen no changes to overall absenteeism and we continue to operate all of our stores without interruption,” she said in an emailed statement.
Malish said the critiques from “a small but vocal group” don’t accurately reflect the collective view of the grocer’s 95,000 employees.
The strike was called for by Whole Worker, a coalition of current and former employees that has been working to organize workers since 2018, initially with aid from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. An union spokeswoman said the
New York-based union isn’t involved in Tuesday’s action.
In the past week, Instacart said 250,000 people have signed up to work as full-service shoppers — “gig” workers who make numerous trips a day to stores to get and deliver groceries that people order on its app. The company said that about 50,000 of those workers have actually started shopping.
It said the strike had no impact on its operations Monday, with 40% more shoppers using its platform compared with the same day last week.
“They need to give us hazard pay right now and it should be guaranteed,” said Shanna Foster, a single mother who stopped working her Instacart gig two weeks ago out of fear of contracting the virus. “It wasn’t worth the risk.”
But a rush of hiring is likely to dilute any attempts by existing workers to organize
walk-offs. Many people are applying for the new jobs as layoffs surge in restaurants, retail, hospitality, airports and other industries that have shut down. Nearly 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, almost five times the previous record set in 1982.
While many Instacart workers said they would stop taking orders Monday, other, newer workers were reluctant to give up a source of income at a time of mass layoffs.
“I’m grateful to have some way to make money,” said Summer Cooper, 39, who started working as an Instacart shopper in the Tampa Bay, Fla., area recently after losing her position as a server at a hotel restaurant.