By Don Cuppett Source: Supermarket News The United Food and Commercial Workers is partnering with the University of Nebraska Medical Center — which took in some of the earliest cruise ship COVID patients — in a study examining how the virus has affected union workers and what to do if [...]
By Jeff Wells Source: Grocery Dive Growing up, Ellen Story never considered making a career in the grocery industry. But then she took a job as a cashier at the Stew Leonard’s store in Norwalk, Connecticut, in the mid 1980s. It was only supposed to be a brief, part-time gig [...]
By Michael Sainato Source: The Guardian After more than two years as essential workers on the frontlines of the Covid-19 pandemic, grocery store workers around the US are pressuring supermarket corporations to raise wages and improve working conditions amid record profits for the industry. Ahead of the expiration of their [...]
By Nathaniel Meyersohn Source: CNN Business Sam Dancy has witnessed it all during his 30 years at supermarket chain QFC in Seattle. But the Omicron variant is pushing him to the brink. Dancy is a front-end supervisor overseeing the store's cash registers, self-checkout kiosks, customer service and liquor departments. In [...]
By Joanna Slater, Laura Reiley, Caroline Anders and María Luisa Paúl Source: The Washington Post These days, when Eddie Chavez supervises the self-checkout area at the Safeway supermarket where he works in Colorado, he swivels his head back and forth like a pendulum, keeping a constant watch on everyone who comes [...]
By Leticia Miranda Source: NBC News As panicked shoppers overwhelmed grocery stores in the early days of the pandemic last year, Angela McMiller’s brother, a Walmart worker in Chicago, called to say he was so sick he couldn’t stand. Phillip Thomas, 48, had been working at the store for nine [...]
As of this week, Oregon has administered one million doses of COVID-19 vaccine. But Governor Brown’s plan designates that grocery workers in Oregon aren’t eligible for vaccination until May 1st. For the last year, most people have dramatically decreased the number of interactions they have outside their immediate family. A [...]
A year ago this month, during the early days of the pandemic, Susan Hernandez, a cashier at Food 4 Less in North Hollywood, found herself in a sea of panic-buying shoppers. The coronavirus hadn’t claimed any lives yet in Southern California, but the scenes in stores gave a certain dawn-of-the-apocalypse [...]
Despite the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations, hazards for frontline workers continue. Early in the pandemic, many large companies increased pay for essential workers, but many of those raises have now expired. Seattle and several cities across California have passed mandatory hazard pay for employees at some large grocers, a move [...]
It has been an exhausting 10 months for Toni Ward Sockwell, an assistant manager at Cash Saver, a grocery chain, in Guthrie, Oklahoma. She has been helping to oversee about 40 anxious employees during a deadly pandemic, vigilantly disinfecting counters at the store and worrying about passing the coronavirus to [...]