Whole Foods employees are staging a nationwide 'sick-out'
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-Guaranteed paid leave for all workers who isolate or self-quarantine instead of coming to work.
-Reinstatement of health care coverage for part-time and seasonal workers.
-Increased FSA funds to cover coronavirus testing and treatment for all team members, including part-time and seasonal.
-Guaranteed hazard pay in the form of double pay during our scheduled hours.
-Implementation of new policies that can facilitate social distancing between workers and customers.
-Commitment to ensuring that all locations have adequate sanitation equipment and procedures in place.
-Immediate shutdown of any location where a worker tests positive for COVID-19. In such an event, all workers should continue to receive full pay until the store can safely reopen.
The one thing that I can't help but question, just thinking in terms of microeconomics (which I'm fairly basic on), is this concept of hazard pay. I've heard that some places are increasing wages already. Doesn't this sort of account for the increased risk? Or to put it another way: If you got a 2x raise but they didn't call it "hazard pay", would you still demand hazard pay?
This should be required by law of all employers.
> -Immediate shutdown of any location where a worker tests positive for COVID-19.
This seems like overkill. How about having all employees wear masks (not N95) and cleaning the store thoroughly if someone tests positive? Or do they mean a few-hour or one-day shutdown?
> This should be required by law of all employers.
All businesses should be required to tell every employee "You don't have to come in to work for the duration of the crisis, unless you feel like it. But you'll get paid regardless."?
This should be the case regardless of any pandemic. Allowing an employee with a mild flu to come to work is irresponsible.
This seems likely to shut down the majority of Whole Foods stores in short order. An unreasonable request, IMO. Grocery stores are genuinely essential to society and the death rate for < 40yo is very small. Put some masks on them and keep working.
I do think high-risk employees should basically be allowed to stay home, though.
Edit: source https://covidtracking.com/data/
Taken together, these considerations imply hospitalization rate for < 40yo should be far below the 10-20% figure. (On the flip side, many of the currently infected who have not yet been hospitalized will be hospitalized in the future.)
I don't know the hospitalization rate for < 40yo, but the death rate is thought to be around 0.1%. It would be very surprising if the hospitalization rate were more than a couple percent.
Edit: grammar.
Employees in states where a shelter in place order is in effect can stay home and collect unemployment backed by the federal government [1]. One might argue everyone is high risk, as you might have a risk factor you're not aware of, leading to an unexpected death. [2]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-stimulus-package...
[2] https://www.insider.com/spanish-coach-francisco-garcia-21-di... (A 21-year-old Spanish soccer coach died from the coronavirus after finding out he had undiagnosed leukemia while he was in hospital)
I think everyone should be doing this, there's no way to track possible infection through the entire supply chain but since the virus dies after some time, inner packages are probably safe if they've been untouched for a while.
If you want to argue for less extreme measures, I will probably support them.
There should be negotiation, back-and-forth. What's frustrating, as somebody not affiliated with the organizing here but has been in similar circumstances, is when the company won't even come to the table to bargain.
Yeah, except item 1 is "Guaranteed paid leave for all workers who isolate or self-quarantine instead of coming to work."
I imagine that if Amazon agreed to that one demand, the workers would be ECSTATIC, because it allows them to get paid whether or not they decide to keep coming to work.
I'm not diminishing the seriousness of the pandemic or saying people don't deserve sick leave or allowances for quarantine- but offering unrestricted full pay to everyone who chooses not to come to work is madness. Why would the employees care if the store gets shut down - they can simply stay home. Why would the employees care about sanitation? They can simply stay home. Etc etc etc.
Not sure why you added the word "unrestricted." Seems like bad faith.
It's YOUR paid leave. They are "allowing" you to.... have what they promised you when you took the job. That has nothing to do with the pandemic.
> You still only have a limited amount of paid leave per year
Then what's the concession? If you have 3 sick days in the bank, and you get coronavirus, then what is the "protection" we're even talking about?
> Not sure why you added the word "unrestricted."
Because no one mentioned any restrictions.
> Seems like bad faith.
Sounds like you're about half a step above cussing out a stranger because you disagree with them.
-Guaranteed hazard pay in the form of double pay during our scheduled hours.
Did the situation you reference have similar urgent hazardous conditions?
Even if that is the case, your counter-example does not produce a counter-fact.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts#Logical...
If the workers in question really are taking this kind of risk, and if their jobs really are essential for the functioning of society, then.. maybe they should be really well paid?
Also, to suggest that in the middle of a pandemic, if a person gets sick they should still have to go to work or lose their job flies in the face of logical reason and the recommendations of the cdc.
It does not ELIMINATE the possibility or even imply it is unlikely.
And in a plague where working puts healthy employee and their families at risk, there is an enormous incentive to not go to work, regardless hazard pay incentives.
BUT I agree:
Paying workers hazard pay is a fair thing to do, assuming the company is capable of doing so.
And paid sick leave for sick people will save lives, again assuming the company is able to.
We can assume Amazon is capable of both.
To eliminate the incentives to abuse that system I would explain to all employees:
(1) You think they deserve hazard pay for staying (2) You will conditionally offer it to them (or be up front why the business can't) (3) You think they deserve paid sick leave (4) You will conditionally offer it to them (or be up front why the business can't) (5) If you are offering either/both hazard pay and paid sick leave, make it conditional:
Each employee signs a form noting they understand the benefits but also understand they can only work if healthy employees show up, and commit to showing up if healthy.
People tend to act honorably when they feel respected, they have given their word, and see the company is doing everything it can for them.
Despite all that, the incentive for healthy workers to avoid a plague are huge and legitimate, so the hazard and sick pay could still muck everything up. But there is not risk free solution.
If you are not being paid well, maybe people would abuse the policy more often. I don't think you can really compare one company to another, even in the same industry. Company cultures can lead to vastly different outcomes with the same policy.
And, unless you are in HR, there is no way for you to know if people were abusing this perk. I would be willing to bet at least one person was abusing it, but maybe the company never found out, or, more likely, they didn't broadcast the abuse to everyone in the company.
I’m one of those who believes that every person, regardless of what the job is, should be well paid and well treated- how much constitutes “well” is a complicated question of course, but as a matter of principle I do find that if the people taking on all these risks is making close to minimum wage, then we are incorrectly pricing their value.
If we were talking about sick leave only, then I misinterpreted the comment I replied to. I saw "isolate and self-quarantine" as not only sick leave, but also "feels like staying home for any reason at all as long as you work the word 'coronavirus' in".
> no questions asked, and in all my time there I never heard of anyone abusing it
Was your last job entry-level with no college requirement, and paid by the hour? Have you ever worked through a deadly pandemic before? Your defense is based on an extremely narrow experience that might not exactly apply to grocery store workers during a health crisis..
I don't think you're going to see a lot of that because most people are decent and honest human beings.
Of course not, but companies need to be smart about it. Make sure the same people work the same shifts together, that way if one of the employees in a shift tests positive, you can isolate and test the others in the shift while continuing work in the meantime.
And of course, for things like grocery stores, focus heavily on pickup versus having customers come into the store.
The only ones it's an economic downer for are the insurance companies.
But ignoring the balance sheet of the insuring entity (company, pool, whatever) will only insure that people don't get that healthcare. It still has to be paid for.
Does anyone have any idea how they're supposed to operate their business if they have to pay workers who don't work? I mean, they would have to hire replacement workers - who also don't need to come to work? Or are the replacement workers supposed to be second-class vs. the original workers?
Amazon can spare a billion or two.
What would be even better is a country-wide system for essential workers, but I imagine that negotiating that at the political level won't be timely.
EDIT: Even a recommended essential worker policy from the top would be helpful guidance for both companies and workers trying to quickly resolve these critical nation-wide issues.
How are these things the same?
Either way, PTO that allows workers to take enough time off to clear a quarantine order isn't unreasonable. All this chit-chat about all the workers staying home and grocers shutting down is missing the forest for the tress.
also PTO is usually subject to approval, not just choosing to stay home whenever.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to me for an employee to be able to call in and say "Hey, [I have | my kid has] [condition], I need some time off" (and get that time off without fearing for their job, house, and food supply).
With unemployment skyrocketing, it seems to me very unlikely that this would be granted. What is the purpose of putting it on the list?
I too would like to double my pay. :-)
I'm not entirely unsympathetic, but I've worked far more dangerous jobs for a lot less money.
Beyond that, what's up with the writing? "Guaranteed" hazard pay? As opposed to "un-guaranteed"? What does that even mean? Guaranteed by whom? And "during our scheduled hours"? ??
More generally-speaking, it's illegal to fire NLRA-covered workers for striking. Granted, the penalties are minimal (penalties are backpay MINUS what the worker earned while they waited for the case to resolve itself... no punitive damages). Also, you have to actually win in court, of course -- and I'm guessing Amazon has good attorneys that can win a tough case. But if you're firing the entire workforce, no attorney is that good. It's clearly retaliation.
It's true that during economic downturns it can be hard to successfully organize, people in all industries feel more replaceable. But it's also true that at times when workers are feeling more pain, there can be tremendous activism. Additionally, there have been times in our country's past when workers were far worse off than today and yet risked far more than their jobs (in some cases, their lives) to win the protections we have now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_strike_of_1959#Invocatio...
No but organizing to not work as a group is something else.
But of course you're comparing here different products of the same "type," a box of cereal versus an entirely different box of cereal by an entirely different manufacturer, so I think they were misleading without that context. Also, pricier products doesn't necessarily mean bigger margins.
I think we all know why.
They are, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to work there. Not one person who works for Whole Foods is employed by force.
They are agreeing to work an essential front line job most likely without health insurance, which means that they will have to purchase health insurance off of the state or federal exchange which may or may not be a garbage high deductible plan with a $2-5k deductible. What will most likely happen is that the same workers if not offered insurance from their employers will just forgot insurance and hope/pray that they don’t get sick. In which case for a mild Covid case (80%mild in the younger adult workers that typically occupy these jobs) then they come to work sick and infect the whole place workers and customers both.
I remember in Seattle checking out at a Trader Joe’s in January in Seattle and the checker looking like absolute death and obviously had a cough but was still working, understandably some people have rent to pay but to suggest this isn’t happening everywhere that doesn’t at least offer decent insurance/hmo coverage would be nuts.
The solution is at the very least to force decent health insurance for all retail workers, or emergency subsidies for all grocery workers health insurance until Covid is over.
I disagree, and my disagreement is shared by contract and employment law in many places which places restrictions on what can be arranged through a contract. I'm skeptical that the only inputs that "need" considering is the mutual 'consent' of both parties.