‘Hero’ raises for many essential workers dry up

Panic-buying has waned since outbreak, retailers reason.

Many retailers across the United States have quietly stopped providing their workers with the pay raises they had dispensed at the start of the pandemic, despite surging virus numbers in many states.

The companies’ rationale for cutting back on “hero” pay is the panic-buying that flooded stores during the early weeks of the crisis has waned.

Stop & Shop is the latest retailer to make such a move, ending a 10% pay raise it gave its 56,000 employees this spring to acknowledge their work was essential and appreciated. Amazon, Kroger and Albertsons have also ended pandemic hourly pay raises, though some of them continue to give out bonuses. ShopRite said it planned to end its $2-an-hour raise early next month.

But while hoarding may be over, infection remains a very real threat, especially in environments such as retail stores, where, even with masks and social-distancing measures, workers say they still feel vulnerable.

As dozens of states endure record levels of new cases, many employees say the job of the essential retail worker has actually become more difficult than at the start of the health crisis.

Many of the retailers said the extra hourly pay was meant to reward employees while they worked through months of wildly surging sales. But lately, there is less reason for the large raises, the companies said.

“As states continue to reopen, we are returning to pre-COVID levels of traffic and demand,” Stop & Shop said in a statement.

And that has changed the economics for employers, even as the health threats and others challenges for workers remain.

In the early weeks of the virus, panic-buying generated record

sales for retailers selling food, health care products and other essential goods.

Those surging sales helped offset the costs retailers were incurring to upgrade their stores with plexiglass barriers and provide masks and hand sanitizer to workers. It also helped pay for pay raises for current employees and to recruit new workers to keep up with the crushing demand.

For some grocery chains, business may no longer be hitting records. But sales are still booming as Americans continue to eat nearly all of their meals at home.

Union officials say ending the raises hurt part-time workers the most because they have tended to receive smaller bonuses.

“They got good public relations out of the raises, and now they are done,” said John R. Durso, president of Local 338 of the Retail Wholesale Department Store Union and the United Food & Commercial Workers union, which represents employees at Stop & Shop and other grocery workers in New York. “It’s all about the bottom line.”

Last month, Kroger said its quarterly operating profits rose 47%, to $1.3 billion. The grocery chain ended its $2-an-hour pay raise enacted in the early weeks of the pandemic. But it recently paid bonuses to employees “to acknowledge their dedication to maintaining safe, clean and stocked stores,” Kroger said in a statement.

TING SHEN / THE NEW YORK TIMES For some grocery chains, business may no longer be hitting records. But sales are still booming as Americans continue to eat nearly all of their meals at home.