Food workers plead for vaccines and hazard pay
“All I want is to do my job, be safe, and protect my family.”
In California at the end of January, NBC4 reported that there were 146 COVID-19 outbreaks at grocery stores in Southern Los Angeles County and Orange County alone. 16 were at Albertsons locations.
Kathleen Scott works at an LA Albertsons, where she said she heard of about 10 infections among coworkers in the past month. One took the virus home and infected family members; she later heard his mother died from COVID-19.
“It's hard to keep going when you understand the risks that you're taking,” she said. “We’re essential to the community—and we are so exposed right now.”
Scott was one of six food workers who told their stories during a Zoom press conference hosted by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) International, the country’s largest food and retail union, this week. The call was organized to draw attention to the fact that in grocery stores and meatpacking plants, some workers still face life-threatening situations on a daily basis. “Simply put, the threat of this pandemic for essential workers is now worse than it ever has been before,” said UFCW president Mark Perrone.
At the start of the pandemic last spring, the risks for workers tasked with ensuring Americans could continue to eat—in farm fields, processing plants, and grocery stores—received lots of attention. Many companies gave employees temporary hazard pay. But in the months since, the issue has faded into the background as others have crowded the news cycle.
Many facilities have since implemented safety measures, but workers are still getting sick. Among its members, UFCW has counted 400 deaths and 77,600 workers infected or exposed. Leah Douglas at the Food and Environment Reporting Network has been tracking the issue since the beginning. She’s counted 87,089 infections among meatpacking workers, food processing workers, and farmworkers and at least 373 deaths. The numbers are not exact because they are not being consistently reported or tracked (by occupation) nationally.
And food workers were a vulnerable population long before COVID-19 emerged. A 2016 report from the Food Chain Workers Alliance looked at worker data across food production, processing, distribution, retail, and food service. It found the lowest hourly median wage of any industry, high reliance on food assistance (like SNAP benefits), and significant wage gaps based on race and gender.
Now, UFCW and other advocacy groups are calling for hazard pay across the country and for food workers to be given priority for vaccinations. While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommended that “non-healthcare frontline essential workers” be in line right behind healthcare workers and long-term care facility residents, it left who falls into that category up to states. As a result, grocery workers currently have access to the vaccines in 13 states and meatpacking workers have access in 12, according to UFCW data.
Of course vaccine supplies are currently limited and states are struggling to find enough doses overall. In New York, the governor recently made restaurant workers eligible for vaccination after he faced fierce criticism for not doing so while opening indoor dining in New York City. The rollout of the expanded eligibility, however, has been bumpy. Healthcare groups have started to vaccinate farmworkers in some places, and some meatpacking plants are offering vaccines on site. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom announced the state will open a mass vaccination site in the Central Valley, one of the country’s largest centers of agricultural production, within a few days. Kroger and JBS have announced that when vaccines are available, they’ll pay employees $100 to get them.
As the situation continues to develop, it will be essential to listen to the workers themselves. To that end, I’m sharing their voices, here.
[Editor’s note: Testimonies have been edited for space and clarity.]
Eric Nelson
Kroger, Cincinnati, Ohio, 11 years
“I have congestive heart failure. I've had it for years. I live with that risk every day, but I have to work. Everybody needs to know the terrible choices essential workers like me face every day.
[Kroger] used to call us heroes, but we're not treated like heroes. Not only did they cut our hazard pay months ago, but they also cut hours in our stores, even on the busiest days ever.
We have seen and heard about grocery workers getting sick and even dying. It makes no sense that Kroger and our elected officials are not doing more to protect us. My coworkers and I are hoping that we finally get some type of relief, but we keep waiting to be vaccinated. I worry that grocery workers like me will not get the vaccine soon enough to stop people from getting sick and dying.
Essential workers like me have sacrificed so much. We're not asking to be specially treated. We're just asking to be protected. It's time for our elected leaders and our president to make the vaccination and hazard pay a priority for workers who put their lives at risk.”
Susan Wilmot
Safeway, Seattle, Washington, 40 years
“The pandemic has made work difficult and stressful, both mentally and physically. It's frustrating for us to still be asking for safety measures to be enforced nearly a year into this. I know people who have tested positive for COVID. A grocery worker friend of mine took it home to her family and lost her son to it. We did get hazard pay for a while, but Safeway, like too many companies, cut hazard pay for us months ago, even though the danger from COVID never went away.
My union helped push forward hazard pay, and last month the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to mandate that grocery chains like Safeway provide an additional $4 per hour in hazard pay. For grocery workers like me, getting hazard pay is not a bonus. It's about being paid for the serious risks we have to face every day. It pains me to know that most grocery workers in our country who are doing the exact same job as me still do not have hazard pay. I hope more cities will follow Seattle's lead.
Every day that goes by without frontline workers like me being vaccinated, more of us will get sick and die. And if anyone ever doubts it, just remember this: The reason we've earned hazard pay is that the danger is still real. We're being asked to put our lives on the line every day.”
[Editor’s note: In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for Albertsons Companies, which owns both Safeway and Albertsons, said that the company intends to offer the vaccine to employees as soon as it is available to them based on state and local laws. He said the company is not currently offering hazard pay “because businesses large and small across our operating areas have reopened and resumed operations. In 2020, while many states and communities were in lockdown from March to June, the company spent nearly $300 million in appreciation pay and extended sick pay for associates. As much of the country lifted restrictions and businesses re-opened their doors, we thanked associates with a reward payment following the final extension of the temporary $2-per-hour appreciation pay through June 13, totaling nearly $40 million. In December, we paid another $45 million in hero pay to our frontline teams.”
Sandra Sibert
Smithfield, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 15 years
“On April 20, I was infected with COVID-19. It was one of the scariest things I have ever in my experience. [My supervisor knew] my symptoms and say there’s nothing they can do. I tried to resume my work at my station, but I struggled to just stay focused. Five days after I got my test results, Smithfield closed all of the Sioux Falls plant.
Early in the pandemic, I tried to get to my supervisor to make masks mandatory and put distance between workers on the line. At that time, hundreds of employees were working without masks. And we were packed like tuna in a can on the processing line.
[Editor’s note: This was one of the largest outbreaks in the country. 1300 workers got sick and four died. A subsequent federal investigation found the company failed to protect workers. Smithfield was fined $13,494. ]
Thanks to my union, safety has improved, but the dangers of COVID are still real. Meatpacking workers are still getting sick in my plant. Meatpacking workers like me are still facing risks every day. All I want is to do my job, be safe, and protect my family. Wherever you work, in a meatpacking plant or grocery store, when you interact with so many people every day, you should be getting hazard pay and vaccinated.”
Antonio Jimenez
JBS, Worthington, Minnesota, 26 years
“Spring of 2020, [there was] a COVID outbreak throughout my plant, and I was one of the workers who got sick. I was out of work for months to recover. [I was] worried through that whole time about passing the infection to my children, family, and friends. Most people I know have at least a couple friends who got COVID at my plant.
While things have improved, COVID is still here in our community and it is still here for me. Personally, I still struggle with effects, symptoms like fatigue. I still don't feel full back to normal nearly a year later, and I still worry for my coworkers and my family. I have to work. It's important, but I don't want anyone else to go through what I went through. We have struggled throughout the hardest part of the pandemic, and I still live in fear today. Workers like me risk our lives to feed America every day of this pandemic. Is it too much that we be vaccinated and receive hazard pay?”
[Editor’s note: JBS has not made ongoing infection data public, but a spokesperson said that currently “one tenth of one percent of our workforce” has COVID. She also pointed to various bonuses distributed throughout the year after hourly hazard pay ended in May. On vaccination, the spokesperson said, in part: “We are partnering with local health authorities to vaccinate our population by age group according to state guidelines. We have not yet had the opportunity to vaccinate an entire facility, but we continue to pursue every option to ensure vaccine availability for our essential workers as quickly as possible. Approximately 500 of our team members have been vaccinated to date.”]
Dawn Hand
Kroger, Houston, Texas, 2 years
“The fact is this pandemic is far from over, and people deserve to know the truth about the dangers essential workers still face and the impossible choices we’re forced to make. The store I work at is in the worst shape I've ever seen, and workers are not being treated with the dignity and the respect that we have earned and deserve. Our store simply isn't being cleaned well enough. We're just too understaffed to take the time to clean. And often we don't have the necessary supplies like sanitizing wipes, and more and more of the workers at my store are getting sick.
But Kroger has been acting like it's over. Instead of acting to protect us, Kroger has the nerve to run ads and put up billboards thanking us. If Kroger really cared about workers like me, it wouldn't have cut hazard pay just two months into the pandemic. On top of all this, many essential workers like me still haven't gotten the vaccine. How much longer do we have to wait? Grocery workers are among the most at risk. All this makes you feel like you don't matter. It feels like leaders here in Texas have abandoned us essential workers. We can't wait any longer. We need help.”
[Editor’s note: A Kroger spokesperson called UFCW’s rhetoric on the dangers faced by workers “disappointing and misleading.” Since the start of the pandemic, she said, “Kroger has invested over $1.5 billion to safeguard and reward our associates and committed nearly $1 billion to secure pensions for tens of thousands of our associates across the country. The company continues to provide rewards for our associates, including $50 million that will pay out to frontline associates on Thursday, February 11.]
A side of policy
Report from Washington: It’s Impeachment Week (take two), so most (all?) attention in DC is on that fact. However, given we’ve got a new administration and Congress, policy conversations about the near and distant future continue.
Yesterday, I had Eric Deeble on my Heritage Radio Network podcast, The Farm Report, to talk about what’s ahead for food and farm policy. Deeble is the policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC). NSAC’s vision for agriculture “is one where a safe, nutritious, ample, and affordable food supply is produced by a legion of family farmers who make a decent living pursuing their trade, while protecting the environment, and contributing to the strength and stability of their communities.” Sounds dreamy, eh?
The interview gets into several different efforts around food and farm policy that currently have a lot of momentum. For example, we talk about two different pieces of legislation that address justice for Black farmers who have been denied access to USDA resources. We also discuss the expansion of conservation programs that help farmers adopt climate-friendly practices. If you’re not a farm policy person, it might get a little wonky, but he’s got so many great insights. (Tip: The link above goes to Simplecast, but if you use Apple, Spotify, or Stitcher to listen to podcasts, just search for The Farm Report and it’ll be the most recent episode.)
Still hungry?
Speaking of the federal government… For Civil Eats, I surveyed President Biden’s food and agriculture appointments and spoke to experts and advocates to see if they reflect his stated commitment to diversity. The big takeaways: Most say he’s doing a pretty good job so far, but it’s too early to get a look at the full picture. Plus, the real work of racial justice in the food system will require more than diverse leadership.
Organic waves of grain. Also for Civil Eats, I covered a new Rodale Institute initiative to get more farmers to transition their farms to organic production. The goal is to convert 55,000 acres of cropland, and many people are excited about the prospect. However, the initiative is controversial because Rodale partnered with Cargill, a massive industrial agriculture company that relies on practices antithetical to organic ideals, to make it happen.
Currently devouring
Open secrets. Nicholas Kristof’s column in Sunday’s New York Times was shared widely this week, and I was initially annoyed by the framing. The “ugly secrets” about Costco’s chicken he purported to reveal are, in fact, evidence of business as usual in the poultry industry. It is not possible to sell a whole, cooked chicken for $4.99 without taking advantage of every “efficiency” possible—raising super fast-growing birds that have health problems, concentrating as many chickens as possible in one place, leading to concentrated waste that produces ammonia levels that also threaten chicken health, etc.
To that end, I appreciated the Costco lawyer’s matter-of-fact comments about the inevitable consequences of raising “18 million broilers at any given time.” He bluntly pointed to most of what the animal rights activists filmed as “normal and uneventful activity.” In other words, it would be silly to think Costco chickens are healthy, slow-growing breeds raised on pasture in flocks of 100.
But I’ve thought about this a lot since, and maybe that’s exactly why the paper of record should tell this story. The industry is so closed off, and most people don’t know that’s an impossible reality. Plus, cheap chicken at Costco is a complicated topic. My gut reaction is: Costco should sell bulk toilet paper, not meat! But if it’s the only food outlet in your rural area, maybe that chicken is necessary? And what about the fact that Costco pays higher wages than most small, sustainable farms? Only massive structural changes can alter those realities, and those are a long time coming. I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this if you feel like commenting below.
What’s for dinner? A very smart editor I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years is launching a new daily dinner recipe newsletter at The Washington Post.
Actually eating
I picked up these pizzas from Well Crafted Kitchen, a wood-fired pizza place in Baltimore that focuses on buying from local farms. It reminded me that pizza is one of the best (and most delicious) foundations for eating seasonally. Grain can be stored, tomatoes can be canned, and then the toppings reflect whatever’s fresh. One of these is covered with sweet potatoes and onions (winter storage crops) and the other is a classic Margherita made with indoor-grown hydroponic basil.
Let’s be friends
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