Kroger is closing two supermarkets in California for refusing to give workers a ‘hero wage’

In the early days of the pandemic, people across the country flocked to grocery stores to stock up on supplies for fear of the worst. I remember rolling my cart into my local Ralph’s, on the east side of Long Beach, California, and the store was seriously busted. The paper products aisle was like a ghost town and shoppers all looked a thousand yards away.

Everyone seemed to look at each other and thought, “Do they have the virus?”

My heart collapsed when I got to the till and saw the rider in a face mask with black gloves. There was a newly installed clear shield that stood between us.

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I remember thinking to myself, “All these workers will get sick. Some will die.” I can’t imagine the stress and anxiety these people felt on the front lines, especially in the early days of the pandemic. Worst of all, most of them had no choice. You can’t just quit your job in the middle of a pandemic and hope for new work.

They were all ducks.

My experience at the Ralph’s on Los Coyotes Boulevard inspired me to write an opinion piece in Upworthy thinking we should have tip jars in our grocery stores. That way, we can all thank the employees for the extreme risk they are taking so that we can feed our families.

Photo by Tod Perry

Eleven months later, my local Ralph’s is closed by its parent company, Kroger, because it refuses to pay $ 4 an hour in “hero pay” imposed by the city. Long Beach, the second most populous city in Los Angeles County, is the first in America to issue a mandatory pay rise to its grocery store employees who risked everything for their jobs.

Kroger is also closing a Food for Less in North Long Beach, a low-income neighborhood where discounted food is a necessity, especially during these times.

On January 19, the city council unanimously approved the 120-day ordinance for hero payments. It applies to retail chains with 300 or more employees nationally and with 15 employees per store in the city, which devote 70% or more of their activities to retail food products.

The next day it was signed by Mayor Robert Garcia.

The regulation comes at a time when supermarkets are making record profits as a result of the pandemic.

“Supermarkets come in every day and risk exposing their lives to the virus,” said Long Beach councilor Mary Zendejas. “Grocery companies are booming in their industry, making profit, record profits, on the shoulders of their employees, and they are not willing to share the profit with them.”

Kroger said sales were up 30% in March and more than 20% in April and May. It also reported a 92% increase in online sales in Q1 2020.

The company provided a $ 2 an hour bonus for its employees at the start of the pandemic, but it was phased out.

“As a result of the City of Long Beach’s decision to pass an ordinance requiring additional pay for grocery workers, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close long-term retail locations in Long Beach,” said a spokesperson for it. company in a press release. “This misguided action by Long Beach City Council goes beyond the traditional negotiation process and applies to some, but not all, grocery workers in the city.”

What’s more annoying is that the stores are scheduled to close on April 17, 89 days after the 120-day period. Why not just wait a month longer?

Garcia vows to fight back against the Kroger closures as he believes it has a responsibility to compensate its employees for the added danger they faced while the company rolled in record profits.

“You have a company that, according to the Brookings Institute, earns double what they normally make, they are finishing the pandemic. And they are saving it from the backs of these workers,” Garcia said on a news report. conference at the Food 4 Less location scheduled to be closed.

“I don’t think anyone who has shopped for the past six months to a year can look into the eyes of one of these employees and tell them that they are not making an extra few dollars an hour for the incredible work they’ve done during this pandemic, ”he continued.

The pandemic is a serious topic for Garcia who lost both his mother and stepfather to COVID-19 last year. His work in deploying vaccines in the city of 467,000 people was applauded by Governor Gavin Newsom and has been called a “model for the state” by The New York Times.

Kroger has the right to close stores to prevent its employees from paying a state-imposed bonus. But it’s bloodless of the company to thank its employees – who heroically got it through the pandemic – by endangering their jobs.

A report in Safety and Health found that “supermarket employees who interact with customers are five times more likely to sign COVID-19 than their colleagues who don’t interact directly with customers.”

The survey also found that 24% of supermarket workers experienced at least mild anxiety related to work.

“After all the hard work I’ve done to feed the needy families and everything and risk my life and my family’s back home, they don’t want to pay an extra $ 4 an hour for four short months,” said Robert. Gonzales, who has been working in the industry for 26 years and is currently working at the Food 4 Less scheduled to close.

“And then it’s over. What’s the reason for this? You’re going to hurt the elderly, the homeless. We give donations every week to the homeless and needy families and they want to take that away,” he added.

“To ask the North Long Beach community to make a choice: jobs with dignity or food on the table. That’s an unfair choice the Kroger company is making to our community,” said Rex Richardson, Long Beach vice mayor.

Garcia says the city will fight back against Kroger in court, but it’s unclear what the justice system can do to prevent a company from closing its doors.

If the number of vaccinations increases and the number of cases falls in the coming months, we will all be happy to leave the pandemic era behind. I hope I can grab my cart and ride one day at my local Ralph’s this summer and see them remove the protective shields that stand between myself and the disc, as well as the stickers on the floor that say ‘keep a 1, 8 meters away ”

But I’m most looking forward to seeing the smiles on the faces of the discs as for the first time in a long time they won’t be wearing masks. I’ll tell them, “Thanks, we couldn’t have made it without you.” Let’s hope Kroger also realizes the same.