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elicash

Here's what they're asking for: https://www.coworker.org/petitions/global-retail-worker-sick...

-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.

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-Immediate shutdown of any location where a worker tests positive for COVID-19.

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.

Hospitalization rate is hovering between 10% and 20%

Edit: source https://covidtracking.com/data/

What's the hospitalization rate for starvation?

I didn't imply they should shut down. I just wanted to point out that the risk that the workers are taking is significantly higher if you take into account how likely they are to get seriously ill. Their protection should be prioritized.

Disrespectful snide aside, probably 8-10 weeks with water supply, dependent of course on your excess body fat.

We don't know the hospitalization rate. That site counts confirmed cases; epidemiologists seem to think total cases are greater by a factor of at least 10x. It also doesn't break out by age group.

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.

You are correct. The estimates are taken from the confirmed cases. I just wanted to point out that it is easy to dismiss the risk service workers are taking if you only look at the fatality rate. The hospitalization rate seems to be one or two orders of magnitude higher.

Edit: grammar.

> I do think high-risk employees should basically be allowed to stay home, though.

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)

Are you guaranteed your job back if there's a stay in place order?

In the United States, no, but we're working on it. Please excuse the dust.

this fails to consider that if an employee of the store tests positive that has an implication for the store itself as well as all the food and products being sold to the public.

I think discarding any product said employee could have touched (eg. baked goods) and sanitizing the store would be cheaper than a full shutdown.

How will you track every product a cashier touched while ringing up customers during a shift? Every product touched while restocking shelves? Every cart touched while collecting them from the parking lot? Will you sanitize the store nightly or weekly? Will you communicate when you do to customers? Will you communicate when the last confirmed case was in your store? How often are workers replacing PPE and is enough available to them (if critical medical staff can't get it, how will you?)? Or are they handling everyone's products and payment methods with the same set of gloves during their entire shift? All important questions.

At this point I assume everything I buy might have coronavirus sitting on the outside packaging. I wipe every item down with a soapy cloth after getting home, wash fruits with soap, reheat meats that are not completely sealed, etc.

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.

It does not seem remotely workable to me to shut down every grocery store in America with a positive COVID test among their staff.

If you want to argue for less extreme measures, I will probably support them.

Yes but the risk is lower then not having grocery store at all. People still need to eat.

right well to solve that problem, you close down one store and not all of them. only the one where someone tested positive and only until that store can be cleaned. There are no towns on the planet that have only a Whole Foods and not 350 other food stores. you open the store again once it's been deep cleaned. nobody starves and that's a total straw man argument.

I'd bet that if Amazon agreed to all demands but that one that the workers who organized this would be ECSTATIC.

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.

> I'd bet that if Amazon agreed to all demands but that one that the workers who organized this would be ECSTATIC.

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.

My employer is allowing us to use our paid leave for this purpose, and we haven't seen this. You still only have a limited amount of paid leave per year and so you can use it for this but it means if you get sick later you can't use it for that.

Not sure why you added the word "unrestricted." Seems like bad faith.

> My employer is allowing us to use our paid leave for this purpose

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.

There is a fair amount of good faith that would be involved with that, yes. Given testing is still scant, how does one remedy this? I think we can all agree that if someone is sick they should stay home, and ideally everyone who needs should get a test, but I just don't know how to separate the ill from the faking.

It’s not ‘full pay’.

-Guaranteed hazard pay in the form of double pay during our scheduled hours.

My last job offered unlimited paid sick leave, no questions asked, and in all my time there I never heard of anyone abusing it. Your assertions are not based in fact.

In this situation workers are taking on risk by showing up due to a pandemic.

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.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_example

One example is enough to disprove the assertion that paid sick time would necessarily be abused any time it is given, which is what the original post asserted. If you’re going to be pedantic at least be correct. What you’ve done is move the goalposts.

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.

No one example only proves it is POSSIBLE for paid sick time to not be abused.

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 being paid well, being treated well by your employer, you might not abuse paid sick leave. Or have a very low rate of it.

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.

There may have been someone abusing it, I can only say for sure that it wasn’t anyone I worked with on a daily basis.

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.

> My last job offered unlimited paid sick leave,

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..

You do realize this is the default (guaranteed by the government) in all of Sweden? It's not madness.

> 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 don't think you're going to see a lot of that because most people are decent and honest human beings.

If they're essential to society, do you support free medical care for all the employees who get sick during this time? Do you support paying for the ongoing costs of an employee that suffers the rest of their life due to complications or after effects from COVID-19?

I'm not the person you're responding to, but, yes. People who are sick should be cared for.

Yes (granted I'm a Canadian who supports countries covering medical expenses for all citizens), but are we also going to close hospitals if any of their employees test positive?

Glad to hear it.

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.

Yes. As should everybody else. Lack of health care access in the US is shameful.

Definitely agree. We pretend it's an economic issue to have universal health care, but really it would help our economy in so many ways.

The only ones it's an economic downer for are the insurance companies.

I certainly support universal solutions for universal problems like healthcare which everyone needs and can benefit from sharing the risk, and the rewards of a healthy community.

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.

the first rule of negotiation is to set your initial ask high

> -Guaranteed paid leave for all workers who isolate or self-quarantine instead of coming to work.

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?

Staff should be wearing gloves and masks already! After someone has been infected and all their contacts should be isolated is a bit late!

>> -Guaranteed paid leave for all workers who isolate or self-quarantine instead of coming to work.

> 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."?

No. All employers should be required to tell employees “if you believe you have a communicable disease that could infect your coworkers or customers, then you MUST NOT come to work, and we or the government will find a way to take care if you.”

This should be the case regardless of any pandemic. Allowing an employee with a mild flu to come to work is irresponsible.

What prevents a worker from stating they believe they have coronavirus? Surely you'd agree there is an incentive to do so (stay home and get paid).

Getting this right is probably moderate complicated, but there are plenty of countries that do it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_leave#Germany

The comment I replied to was "isolate and self-quarantine". You're talking about self-quarantine, but isolate sounds more like a preventative step.

> -Guaranteed hazard pay in the form of double pay during our scheduled hours.

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"? ??

Maybe they mean paid each pay cycle. Vs a promise for a lump sum at the end of the pandemic.

>Guaranteed paid leave for all workers who isolate or self-quarantine instead of coming to work.

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?

Certainly Jeff Bezos could spare a billion or two.

While I am sure he can, I personally like to see reasons that are more general than picking on particular people.

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.

Its not going to work, if you pay people to not work, who is going to work then ? Money will become useless.

Paying people to not (come into) work is pretty much critical to not getting a huge number of people (not necessarily the same people!) killed in a pandemic.

Surely you agree there are some workers to whom that does not apply? I'm fairly sure we can't send all the utility workers home, can we?

If it's pandemic, the infected workers have to be sent home to avoid infecting others. This is actually even more important for the essential workers. Otherwise you end up with them all off sick at once.

There's literally no-one here disputing that sick workers should get to stay home. What's being discussed is the proposition that healthy workers who decide to self-isolate should be paid to do so.

If you don't pay them to stay home they'll come back to work sick and infect others. Not everyone can rely on a hefty savings to pay their rent.

Then who is going to work if you can get paid for not working ?

The same way any other employer is able to offer PTO? It should just be a cost of doing business (and is in much of Europe).

... which is limited; often pro-rated in the first year of employment; and has to be scheduled in agreement with your employer so that not all critical staff go out on vacation at once.

How are these things the same?

My take on the linked demand list was the included terms were broad and generic for public consumption, not the actual demands submitted to WF. Maybe they are the actual demands, in which case, it's like they are just be the employee's first ask, fully expecting to negotiate back to something more reasonable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring#In_negotiations

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.

it's hard to assess whether the demand is reasonable when it doesn't specify a max number of days or accrual rate.

also PTO is usually subject to approval, not just choosing to stay home whenever.

How would one go about obtaining prior permission for sick leave? You don't know you're going to get COVID, or break an arm, or whatever.

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).

this is part of my point. sick leave isn't equivalent to PTO.

I generally have mixed feelings on unions, but overall these seem like pretty reasonable demands and it seems like a good thing for Whole Foods to do from a PR standpoint anyway. They would make me more confident if I were a Whole Foods shopper if nothing else.

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?

I don't think "hazard pay" has any legally defined meaning in the US. it might imply that they are only demanding the 2x pay for the duration of the crisis.

> Guaranteed hazard pay in the form of double pay

With unemployment skyrocketing, it seems to me very unlikely that this would be granted. What is the purpose of putting it on the list?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring

Did Whole Foods finally remove health insurance for people on part time 20? Or are they asking it to be applied to non part time 20 workers.

lots of room for reasonable compromise in there

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