No masks? No hazard pay? Amid COVID-19 surge, grocery store workers demand protections

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

As they brace for the holiday rush, grocery store and other frontline workers are demanding hazard pay, better cleaning of their workplaces and the mandatory wearing of masks to improve safety amid the spike in coronavirus cases across the country.

Leaders and members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents more than 1 million food, retail and meatpacking plant workers, said Monday that many major employers have grown lax, cutting wages and protections put in place when the coronavirus first began to spread in the spring.

“We’re entering what could prove to be the riskiest and deadliest phase of this pandemic for million of essential frontline workers,’’ says Marc Perrone, UCFW International's president, adding that as the holidays begin, grocery stores are in the midst of their busiest five-week period of the year. "The fear that they feel is as great if not greater than it was in the early days of this ....pandemic."

Perrone says that at least 350 of his union's members have died from COVID-19 including 109 grocery store employees, and more than 48,000 members have become ill or been exposed to the virus.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/no-masks-no-hazard-pay-amid-covid-19-surge-grocery-store-workers-demand-protections/ar-BB1bhRnw?li=BBnb7Kz

[Hotler]

1. It starts with the stores management to enforce mask for all customer..

or you don't come in. Kroger and Home Depot around me are bad about it. I support the workers. This is the management that thinks it's a good thing to move product from one end of the isle to the other or just move it just to fuck with us.

[Liberty Belle]

2. My assistant has a second job in a grocery store. She told me tonight she's ill,

and praying it's not COVID. I worry about her. She's a young woman, autistic, living alone after her Mom died.

So far she just has a sore throat, I'm worried about her and all the workers out there being put at risk.

In our state masks are required and grocery chains are good about enforcing it, but there have still been outbreaks tied to grocery stores. She also lives near a college that has had an outbreak due to idiots in frats and sororities holding parties illegally.

She has been doing her work for me remotely for several months, so I'm not exposed. But I really about her since she has nobody at home to help her if she gets sicker.

[MustLoveBeagles]

3. I hope it's just a cold

She'll need to get tested to be sure.

[Liberty Belle]

4. Not COVID, apparently.

She's feeling better and back at work.

[MustLoveBeagles]

5. That's good to hear

I'm sure she's relieved.