Instacart will fire its only union workers as part of a plan to lay off nearly 1,900 workers stationed in supermarkets across the country.
The grocery delivery company employs thousands of customers who pack groceries in the stores for pickup or delivery. That’s in contrast to the roughly 500,000 independent contractors who pick up items from different locations and deliver them to customers.
Instacart this week unveiled plans to fire about 1,877 of those in-store visitors as part of a shift in the way supermarkets use their services. The affected employees work in stores that will use their own employees to fulfill takeaway orders placed through Instacart, the company says.
Among them are 10 customers at a Mariano’s grocery store in Skokie, Illinois, who became the only Instacart employees to join a union last year.
Instacart says the cuts had nothing to do with the workers being unions. But the move infuriated the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents Mariano’s staffers, and has pushed for stronger grocery worker protections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Instacart firing the only union workers in the company and destroying the jobs of nearly 2,000 dedicated frontline workers in the midst of this public health crisis is simply wrong,” Marc Perrone, the union’s international chairman, said in a statement.
Mariano’s store is one of many owned by supermarket giant Kroger, where about 366 Instacart buyers will be dropped as of mid-March, according to a Tuesday letter Instacart’s lawyers sent to the UFCW.
The San Francisco-based startup – which is reportedly preparing to go public this year – said the layoffs were a result of retailers’ decisions to fulfill orders with their own employees rather than Instacart’s.
But it is also “significantly more expensive on a cost-per-delivery basis” for Instacart to use in-store customers in certain places compared to its full-service contractors, who can both fulfill and deliver orders rather than pick up items from the store. shopkeepers, lawyer Joseph Santucci said in his letter to the union.
Instacart says it will transfer dismissed customers to other stores where it has open positions or will try to help them get hired by the retailer running their current store. Those who are cut will receive termination benefits ranging from $ 250 to $ 750, depending on experience, Santucci wrote.
“We know this is an incredibly challenging time for many as we go through the COVID-19 crisis, and we are committed to supporting shoppers in this transition,” Instacart said in a statement.