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NLRB Bars Mandatory Anti-Union Meetings After Amazon Draws Complaint

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The ruling, stemming from a complaint against Amazon, bars companies from compelling workers to attend meetings on unionization’s downsides.The National Labor Relations Board ruled on Wednesday that companies may not compel workers to attend meetings on the downsides of unionization, a tactic that unions say stifles worker organizing.The decision, the latest in a slew of labor board rulings under the Biden administration aimed at supporting workers’ right to unionize, stems from a complaint over Amazon’s conduct before a successful union election in 2022 at a Staten Island warehouse, the first Amazon warehouse in the nation to unionize. The company held hundreds of meetings there and at another location to discourage workers from supporting a union.The N.L.R.B.’s ban on so-called captive audience meetings is a precedent with potential impact beyond Amazon, though it could be reversed after President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office. Facing a wave of union campaigns since the onset of the pandemic, large employers including Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and REI have held such meetings in what labor regulators and unions have described as an effort to clamp down on organizing. The companies have denied accusations of anti-union campaigns.These meetings, which employees are often required to attend, give employers “near-unfettered freedom to force their message about unionization on workers,” Lauren McFerran, the Democratic chairman of the labor board, said in a statement. She added that they undermine employees’ ability to choose whether they want union representation, a right guaranteed under federal law.“Today’s decision better protects workers’ freedom to make their own choices in exercising their rights,” Ms. McFerran said, “while ensuring that employers can convey their views about unionization in a noncoercive manner.”Amazon intends to appeal the decision, said Mary Kate Paradis, a company spokeswoman, calling the ruling a violation of the First Amendment and adding that it “contradicts the express language” of the National Labor Relations Act. Meetings are often held “because the decision about whether or not to join a union is an important one, and employees deserve to understand the facts so they can make an informed choice,” she said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Amazon Argues National Labor Relations Board Is Unconstitutional

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    The company made the novel claim, echoing arguments by SpaceX and Trader Joe’s, in a legal filing while fighting a case.In the latest sign of a growing backlash within corporate America to the 88-year-old federal agency that enforces labor rights, Amazon argued in a legal filing on Thursday that the National Labor Relations Board was unconstitutional.The move followed a similar argument by SpaceX, the rocket company founded and run by Elon Musk, in a legal complaint in January, and by Trader Joe’s during a labor board hearing a few weeks later.The labor board consists of a prosecutorial arm, which issues complaints against employers or unions deemed to have violated federally protected labor rights; administrative judges, who hear complaints; and a five-member board in Washington, to which decisions can be appealed.Amazon’s filing was part of a case before an administrative judge in which labor board prosecutors have accused Amazon of illegally retaliating against workers at a Staten Island warehouse known as JFK8, which unionized two years ago.The company’s lawyers repeatedly denied in their filing that Amazon had broken the law. Then, under a section titled “Other Defenses,” they argued that “the structure of the N.L.R.B. violates the separation of powers” by “impeding the executive power provided for in Article II of the United States Constitution.”The company also argued that the board or its actions or proceedings violated Articles I and III of the Constitution, as well as the Fifth and Seventh Amendments — in the last case because, the filing said, board hearings can seek legal remedies beyond what’s allowed without a trial by jury.Amazon declined to comment.The claims it made in the filing echo arguments that lawyers for SpaceX made in a federal lawsuit last month, after the labor board issued a complaint accusing the company of illegally firing eight employees for criticizing Mr. Musk. SpaceX sued in Texas, but a federal judge there on Thursday granted the board’s motion to transfer the case to California, where the company’s headquarters are located.In a statement, the board’s general counsel, Jennifer A. Abruzzo, said, “I am pleased that SpaceX’s blatant forum-shopping efforts in Texas attempting to enjoin the agency’s litigation against it have failed.”Wilma Liebman, a chairwoman of the labor board under President Barack Obama, called the arguments by Amazon and SpaceX “radical,” adding that “the constitutionality of the N.L.R.B. was settled nearly 90 years ago by the Supreme Court.”The arguments appear to align with a broader conservative effort to question the constitutionality of a variety of regulatory actions, some of which have resulted in cases before the Supreme Court.In January, the Supreme Court also agreed to hear a case brought by Starbucks, which is challenging a federal judge’s order reinstating employees who were fired during a union campaign. The outcome of the case could rein in the labor board’s longstanding practice of seeking reinstatement for workers while their cases are litigated, a process that can take years. More

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    Companies Are Pushing Back Harder on Union Efforts, Workers Say

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    Apple, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and REI are accused of targeting union supporters after organizing efforts gained traction, charges the companies deny.After working for more than seven years at an Apple store in Kansas City, Mo., Gemma Wyatt ran into trouble.Last year, she said, managers disciplined her for clocking in late a few times over the previous several weeks. Then, in February, Apple fired her after she missed a store meeting because she was sick but failed to notify managers soon enough, according to Ms. Wyatt.She was at least the fifth Apple employee the store had fired since this fall, all of whom had been active in union organizing there. The terminations came after two other Apple stores voted to unionize.“It took us time to realize they weren’t firing us just because of time and attendance,” said Ms. Wyatt, who is part of a charge filed with the National Labor Relations Board in March accusing Apple of unfair labor practices.Apple said it had not disciplined or fired any workers in retaliation for union activity. “We strongly deny these claims and look forward to providing the full set of facts to the N.L.R.B.,” a spokeswoman said.A pattern of similar worker accusations — and corporate denials — has arisen at Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and REI as retail workers have sought to form unions in the past two years.Initially, the employers countered the organizing campaigns with criticism of unions and other means of dissuasion. At Starbucks, there were staffing and management changes at the local level, and top executives were dispatched. But workers say that in each case, after unionization efforts succeeded at one or two stores, the companies became more aggressive.Some labor relations experts say the companies’ progressive public profiles may help explain why they chose to hold back at the outset.“You’re espousing these values but saying this other organization claiming the same values” — the union — “isn’t good for your work force,” said David Pryzbylski, a labor lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg who represents employers. “It puts you in a little bit of corner.”Once the union wins a few elections, however, “you pull out all the stops,” Mr. Pryzbylski said.In some cases, the apparent escalation of company pushback has coincided with a slowing down of the union campaigns. At Starbucks, filings for union elections fell below 10 in August, from about 70 five months earlier, and no Apple store has filed for a union election since November.At Starbucks, the company unlawfully dismissed seven Buffalo-area employees last year, not long after the union won two elections there, according to a ruling by a federal administrative judge.A Trader Joe’s store in Louisville, Ky., which was the third at the company to unionize, fired two employees who were supportive of the union campaign and has formally disciplined several more, said Connor Hovey, a worker involved in the organizing. Documents shared by Mr. Hovey show the company citing a variety of issues, such as dress-code violations, tardiness and excessively long breaks.And in advance of a recent union election at an REI near Cleveland, management sought to exclude certain categories of workers from voting, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. It said the chain, a co-op that sells recreational gear, had made no such challenge in two previous elections, in which workers voted to unionize. (The union said the company had backed down after workers at the Cleveland-area store walked out, and the store voted to unionize in March.)Jess Raimundo, a spokeswoman for the United Food and Commercial Workers, which is also seeking to unionize REI stores, said the co-op had formally disciplined one employee in Durham, N.C., and put another on leave and later fired him over a workplace action that took place after the workers filed for a union election last month.Starbucks, which is appealing the ruling involving the Buffalo-area employees, has said the firings and discipline were unrelated to union organizing. A Trader Joe’s spokeswoman said that the company had never disciplined an employee for seeking to unionize but that unionizing efforts didn’t exempt an employee from job responsibilities.An REI spokeswoman said that the co-op sought to exclude certain categories of workers near Cleveland because it believed their duties made them ineligible to join a union, and that it had reached an agreement on the issue independent of the walkout. The spokeswoman said the two Durham employees had been disciplined for violations of company policies, not union activity.Across the companies, the shift is such that some organizers look back on their union campaigns’ early days with an odd measure of nostalgia.“Thinking about it, I wondered why they didn’t fight harder at our store,” said Maeg Yosef, a worker and an organizer at a Trader Joe’s in Massachusetts that became the company’s first store to unionize last year. “They were like, ‘Oops, you won’ and certified us. It was really hard, but relatively easy compared to the things they could have done.”The fight at Apple followed a similar trajectory. The company did not hide its suspicion of unions when workers at a U.S. store first filed for an election in April 2022, in Atlanta. Managers emphasized that employees could receive fewer promotions and less flexible hours if they unionized, and the company circulated a video of its head of retail questioning the wisdom of putting “another organization in the middle of our relationship.”Apple’s response was similar in two other union campaigns. But although the union withdrew its election filing in Atlanta, unions won elections in both subsequent cases — first in Towson, Md., in June and then in Oklahoma City in October.According to workers, the company became more aggressive once union organizers made inroads. Around the time that employees in Oklahoma City filed for a union election in September, managers at the Kansas City store disciplined several who supported unionizing for issues related to tardiness or absences that other workers typically have not been punished for, union backers said.Terminations began before the end of the year. D’lite Xiong, a union supporter who started at the Kansas City store in 2021 and uses gender-neutral pronouns, said they were told they were being fired just before Halloween. Mx. Xiong went on leave to buy time to appeal the decision, but was officially let go upon returning in January.D’lite Xiong, a union supporter, was fired from an Apple store in Kansas City, Mo. several months ago. Will Newton for The New York Times“It didn’t make sense to me — I had recently gotten promoted,” said Mx. Xiong, who speculated that the company discovered their role in union organizing after they sought to enlist co-workers. “I was praised for doing a great job.”The Communications Workers of America, which represents Apple workers in Oklahoma and has supported workers seeking to unionize the Kansas City store, filed the unfair labor practice charge against the company over the firings in March.John Logan, a professor at San Francisco State University who is an expert on anti-union campaigns, said companies often considered the potential dissatisfaction of customers, investors and even white-collar corporate employees when calibrating their response to a union campaign.“There’s something deeply threatening about the idea that you might be on the verge of losing them,” Mr. Logan said of corporate employees.But even these considerations, he said, tend to fade once a campaign gains traction: “The overriding priority is, ‘We have to crush this.’”This year, more than 70 Starbucks corporate employees placed their names on a petition calling on the company to stay neutral in union elections and to “respect federal labor laws.” The National Labor Relations Board has issued dozens of complaints against the company accusing it of illegal behavior, which the company denies.Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks chief executive, was quick to push back against such accusations while testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in March, telling one senator, “I take offense with you categorizing me or Starbucks as a union-buster.”In late April, the labor board issued a complaint accusing the company of failing to bargain in good faith at more than 100 stores.A company spokesman attributed the delay to the union, including its insistence on broadcasting sessions using video-chat software, which could make it difficult to discuss sensitive topics.Apple, too, appears intent on signaling that it is not hostile to labor. The company agreed this year to assess its U.S. labor practices for consistency with its human rights policy. And the company has reached tentative agreements with the union at its Towson store on a handful of issues, such as a commitment that workers at the store will receive any improvement in 401(k) benefits that nonunion retail workers at the company might receive.Yet despite these gestures, there has been little progress on most of the union’s top noneconomic priorities, such as grievance procedures, and the company has sought broad contract provisions that could substantially weaken the union. For example, under a proposed a management-rights clause obtained by The New York Times, Apple would have wide latitude to use nonunion workers and contractors to do work performed by union members, which could shrink union membership. Labor negotiations typically start with noneconomic issues before moving to matters like wages and paid time off.Apple did not comment on the contract negotiations, but the workers in Oklahoma City have characterized their initial bargaining sessions as “very productive.”Mr. Pryzbylski, the lawyer who represents employers, said Apple’s preferred management-rights clause was “about as robust and aggressive as you can make it,” though he said it was not unusual for companies to seek such broad rights in their first contract.Workers expressed frustration at the breadth of the management proposal. “Everyone from the union at the table had never seen one so long,” said Kevin Gallagher, who serves on the bargaining committee in Towson. “They basically wanted to maintain all the rights of not having a union.” More

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    Workers at Trader Joe’s in Brooklyn Reject Union

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    Workers at a Trader Joe’s store in Brooklyn have voted against unionizing, handing a union its first loss at the company after two victories this year.The workers voted 94 to 66 against joining Trader Joe’s United, an independent union that represents employees at stores in Western Massachusetts and Minneapolis. Workers at a Trader Joe’s in Colorado filed for an election this summer but withdrew their petition shortly before a scheduled vote.“We are grateful that our crew members trust us to continue to do the work of listening and responding to their needs, as we always have,” Nakia Rohde, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement after the National Labor Relations Board announced the result on Thursday.The result raises questions about whether the uptick in union activity over the past year, in which unions won elections at several previously nonunion companies like Starbucks, Amazon and Apple, may be slowing.Union supporters recently lost an election at an Amazon warehouse near Albany, N.Y., and the pace of unionization at Starbucks has dropped in recent months, though the union has won elections at over 250 of the company’s 9,000 corporate-owned U.S. stores so far.Workers at a second Apple store recently won an election in Oklahoma City, however, and unions have upcoming votes at a Home Depot in Philadelphia and a studio owned by the video game maker Activision Blizzard in upstate New York.As of June, Trader Joe’s had more than 500 locations and 50,000 employees across the country and was not unionized. Early in the pandemic, the company’s chief executive sent a letter to employees complaining of a “current barrage of union activity that has been directed at Trader Joe’s” and arguing that union supporters “clearly believe that now is a moment when they can create some sort of wedge in our company.”The company has said it is prepared to negotiate contracts at its unionized stores. An employee involved in the union, Maeg Yosef, said the two sides were settling on bargaining dates.Union supporters at the Brooklyn store had said they were seeking an increase in wages, improved health care benefits and paid sick leave as well as changes that would make the company’s disciplinary process more fair.Before union supporters had a chance to talk with all their colleagues, management became aware of the campaign and announced it in a note posted in the store’s break room in late September. The company also fired a prominent union supporter a day or two later.Amy Wilson, a leader of the union campaign in the store, said organizing had become more difficult after the firing and the note from management.“The last core of people hadn’t been spoken to directly by their co-workers, and we lost them instantly,” she said, referring to the note. “It undermined the trust, the relationship. They felt excluded and offended.”Ms. Rohde, the Trader Joe’s spokeswoman, did not respond to a question about why management posted the break room note. She said that while she couldn’t comment on the firing of the union supporter, “we have never and would never fire a crew member for organizing.”Trader Joe’s is known for providing relatively good wages and benefits for the industry, though workers have complained that the company has made its health care and retirement benefits less generous over the past decade. More

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    How Is Your Company Responding to Labor Organizing? We Want to Hear.

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    Employers are taking a variety of approaches to union campaigns.An Amazon Labor Union rally on Staten Island in April.DeSean McClinton-Holland for The New York TimesMaterials being prepared for workers seeking to unionize Starbucks stores.Tony Luong for The New York TimesThere has been a surge in labor organizing among baristas at Starbucks, warehouse workers at Amazon and retail workers at Apple and Trader Joe’s. They have made their voices heard, though only a fraction of each group has joined a union, and some have rejected unionization.We’d like to hear the voices of those farther from the front lines — managers and white-collar workers at those companies, particularly those at corporate headquarters. If you fit this profile, please consider responding to the questions below. Your answers may help us better understand the state of labor relations and inform our reporting.We won’t publish your name or any part of your submission without contacting you first. If you prefer to share tips or thoughts confidentially, you can do so here.Tell us how your employer is dealing with union efforts. More

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    Trader Joe’s Workers Vote to Unionize at a Second Store

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    Workers at a Trader Joe’s in Minneapolis voted on Friday to unionize, adding a second unionized store to the more than 500 locations of the supermarket chain.Employees at a Trader Joe’s in Massachusetts voted to unionize last month, part of a trend of recent union victories involving service workers at companies like Starbucks, Apple and Amazon.The Minneapolis vote was 55 to 5, according to the National Labor Relations Board, which held the election.The Minneapolis workers voted to join Trader Joe’s United, the same independent union that represents workers in Hadley, Mass. Workers at a third Trader Joe’s store, in Colorado, have filed for a union election, but the labor board has not yet authorized a vote or set an election date.In a statement referring to the election results in Minneapolis, a Trader Joe’s spokeswoman, Nakia Rohde, said, “While we are concerned about how this new rigid legal relationship will impact Trader Joe’s culture, we are prepared to immediately begin discussions with their collective bargaining representative to negotiate a contract.”Sarah Beth Ryther, a Trader Joe’s worker in Minneapolis who was involved in the organizing campaign, said her co-workers had been motivated in part by dissatisfaction with pay and benefits, issues that helped prompt the union campaign in Massachusetts. Workers have complained that the company has made its benefits less generous in recent years, though some benefits have improved more recently.But Ms. Ryther said she and her colleagues were also concerned that the store, which is in an area where some residents struggle with drug dependency and mental health challenges, appeared not to have protocols or systems in place to handle certain emergencies. She cited a person who came into the store last fall with what appeared to be a gunshot wound and collapsed into her arms.Police officers arrived quickly, Ms. Ryther said, but Trader Joe’s did little to address the aftermath, such as explaining to workers what had happened. Several days passed before she was told that she could collect workers’ compensation while taking time off to deal with the trauma, she said.Trader Joe’s did not respond to a request for comment on Ms. Ryther’s account of the workers’ complaints and the store’s conditions, but, in her statement, Ms. Rohde said the company was “committed to responding quickly when circumstances change to ensure we are doing the right thing to support our crew.”In March 2020, the company’s chief executive, Dan Bane, sent a letter to employees referring to “the current barrage of union activity that has been directed at Trader Joe’s” and asserting that union advocates “clearly believe that now is a moment when they can create some sort of wedge in our company through which they can drive discontent.” More

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    Trader Joe’s Workers File to Hold Company’s First Union Election

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    The workers, at a store in western Massachusetts, cited health and safety concerns and cuts to benefits at the grocery chain.In a sign that service industry workers continue to have a strong interest in unionizing after successful votes at Starbucks, REI and Amazon, employees at a Trader Joe’s in western Massachusetts have filed for a union election. If they win, they will create the only union at Trader Joe’s, which has more than 500 locations and 50,000 employees nationwide.The filing with the National Labor Relations Board late Tuesday seeks an election involving about 85 employees who would form an independent union, Trader Joe’s United, rather than affiliate with an established labor organization. That echoes the independent union created by Amazon workers on Staten Island and the worker-led organizing at Starbucks.“Over the past however many years, changes have been happening without our consent,” said Maeg Yosef, an 18-year employee of the store who is a leader of the union campaign. “We wanted to be in charge of the whole process, to be our own union. So we decided to go independent.”Ms. Yosef said the union had support from over 50 percent of workers at the store, known as crew members.“We have always said we welcome a fair vote and are prepared to hold a vote if more than 30 percent of the crew wants one,” said a company spokeswoman, Nakia Rohde, alluding to the N.L.R.B. threshold for an election. “We are not interested in delaying the process in any way.”The company shared a similar statement with workers after they announced their intention to unionize in mid-May.In explaining their decision, Ms. Yosef and four colleagues, all of whom have been with the company for at least eight years, cited changes that had made their benefits less generous over time, as well as health and safety concerns, many of which were magnified during the pandemic.“This is probably where we get to all of these things coming together,” said Tony Falco, another worker involved in the union campaign, alluding to Covid-19.Mr. Falco said the store, in Hadley, took several reassuring steps during the first 12 to 15 months of the pandemic. Management enforced masking requirements and restrictions on the number of customers who could be in the store at once. It allowed workers to take leaves of absence while continuing to receive health insurance and gave workers additional “thank you” pay as high as $4 per hour.But Mr. Falco and others said the company was too quick to roll back many of these measures — including additional pay — as vaccines became widely available last year, and noted that the store had suffered Covid outbreaks in the past several weeks after masking became laxer. The store followed the policy of the local health board, which altered its mask mandate at various points, lifting it most recently in March.Some employees were also upset that the company did not inform them that the state had passed a law requiring employers to provide up to five paid days off for workers who missed work because of Covid.“It was in effect seven months, and they never announced it,” Ms. Yosef said. “I figured that out at the end of December, early January.”Ms. Rohde, the spokeswoman, said this account was incorrect, but four other employees who support the union also said the company had not told them of the policy.A Trader Joe’s store in New York. Early in the pandemic, the chief executive wrote that union advocates “clearly believe that now is a moment when they can create some sort of wedge in our company.”Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesTrader Joe’s has generally resisted unionization over the years, including earlier in the pandemic. In March 2020, the chief executive, Dan Bane, sent employees a letter referring to “the current barrage of union activity that has been directed at Trader Joe’s” and complaining that union advocates “clearly believe that now is a moment when they can create some sort of wedge in our company through which they can drive discontent.”The company’s response to the current campaign appears somewhat less hostile, though union organizers have recently filed charges of unfair labor practices, such as asking employees to remove pro-union pins.Several employees said a broader issue was underlying their frustrations: what they saw as the company’s evolution from a niche outlet known for pampering customers and treating employees generously to an industrial-scale chain that is more focused on the bottom line.The company’s employee handbook urges workers to provide a “Wow customer experience,” which it defines as “the feelings a customer gets about our delight that they are shopping with us.” But longtime employees say the company, which is privately held, has gradually become stingier with workers.For years, the company offered health care widely to part-timers. In the early 2010s, the company raised the average weekly hours that employees needed to qualify for full health coverage to 30 from roughly 20, informing those who no longer qualified that they could receive coverage under the federal Affordable Care Act instead. (The company dropped the threshold to 28 hours more recently.)“It was done under the guise of ‘You can get these plans, they’re the same plans,’ but they were not the same plans,” said Sarah Yosef, the Hadley store’s manager at the time, who later stepped back from the role and is now a frontline worker there.“I had to sit there individually with crew members saying you’re going to be losing health insurance,” added Ms. Yosef, who is married to Maeg Yosef.Retirement benefits have followed a similar trajectory: Around the same time, Trader Joe’s lowered its retirement contribution to 10 percent of an employee’s earnings from about 15 percent, for employees 30 and older. Beginning with last year’s benefit, the company lowered the percentage again for many workers, who saw the contribution fall to 5 percent. The company is no longer specifying any set amount.Tony Falco and Sarah Yosef at the Trader Joe’s store in Hadley. She said, “I had to sit there individually with crew members saying you’re going to be losing health insurance.”Holly Lynton for The New York TimesMs. Rohde, the spokeswoman, said the change was partly a response to indications from many workers that they would prefer a bonus to a retirement contribution.Workers said the company’s determination to provide an intimate shopping experience had often come at their expense amid a rapid increase in business over the past decade, and then again with the resurgence of business as pandemic restrictions lifted.For example, Trader Joe’s doesn’t have conveyor belts at checkout lines and instructs cashiers to reach into customers’ carts or baskets to unload items. This can appear to personalize the service but takes a physical toll on workers, who typically bend over hundreds of times during a shift.(The company asks workers to perform different tasks throughout the day so they are not constantly ringing up customers.)Maeg Yosef and her co-workers began discussing the union campaign over the winter, angry over the store’s failure to publicize the state-mandated paid leave benefit and the change in retirement benefits, and some have drawn inspiration from the successful union elections at Starbucks, Amazon and REI.Their union campaign may also benefit from the same leverage that workers at those companies enjoyed as a result of the relatively tight job market.“People just keep leaving — I know they want to hire people now,” Maeg Yosef said. “It’s hard to keep people around.” More

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    ‘We Are Forgotten’: Grocery Workers Hope for Higher Pay and Vaccinations

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationCalifornia Anti-Vaccine ProtestsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘We Are Forgotten’: Grocery Workers Hope for Higher Pay and VaccinationsBooming business during the pandemic hasn’t always meant better wages, and they have largely been left off vaccine priority lists.Workers protesting outside the Food 4 Less in Long Beach, Calif. Kroger plans to close the store after the city required “hero pay” for grocery workers.Credit…Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesSapna Maheshwari and Feb. 8, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETIt has been an exhausting 10 months for Toni Ward Sockwell, an assistant manager at Cash Saver, a grocery chain, in Guthrie, Okla. 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 her elderly mother while dropping off produce.News of the vaccines initially boosted her spirits, but her optimism faded as she learned that grocery store workers in Oklahoma would not be eligible for them until spring.“When they said we were Phase 3, I wanted to laugh,” Ms. Sockwell, 45, said. “We’re around just as many sick people as we are around nonsick people, just like health care workers, because we are always going to be open to supply food to the public.“Health care workers are heroes in my eyes,” she added. “But we are forgotten.”The race to distribute vaccines and the emergence of more contagious variants of Covid-19 have put a renewed spotlight on the plight of grocery workers in the United States. The industry has boomed in the past year as Americans have stayed home and avoided restaurants. But in most cases, that has not translated into extra pay for its workers. After Long Beach, Calif., mandated hazard pay for grocery workers, the grocery giant Kroger responded last week by saying it would close two locations.And now, even as experts warn people to minimize time spent in grocery stores because of new coronavirus variants, The New York Times found only 13 states that had started specifically vaccinating those workers.“Grocers are known to have these very thin margins, which they do, but they have been very profitable during the pandemic,” said Molly Kinder, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who has researched retailers’ pay during the pandemic. “Employers by and large, with only a few exceptions like Trader Joe’s and Costco, ended hazard pay months and months ago.”She added, “If you look at how the virus has gone since then, it’s so much more deadly now.”“We’re around just as many sick people as we are around nonsick people,” Toni Ward Sockwell said of grocery store workers like her. Credit…Nick Oxford for The New York TimesBrookings found that while 13 of the largest retail and grocery companies in the United States earned $17.7 billion more in the first three quarters of 2020 than they did a year earlier, most stopped offering extra compensation to their associates in the early summer. At the same time, some opted to buy back shares and gave big sums to executives.The tension is especially high on the West Coast, where cities like Los Angeles and Seattle have moved forward with mandates that require hazard pay for essential grocery workers — and are now facing threats of store closures and even an end to food bank donations from grocers.Bertha Ayala, who works at a Food 4 Less store in Long Beach, was ecstatic after the city enacted an ordinance last month requiring her store, which is owned by Kroger, to pay its workers an additional $4 per hour of “hero pay” to compensate them for the risks they face.“I love my job,” Ms. Ayala said. “But it has been very stressful.” She said the extra pay was welcome considering the high cost of living in Southern California and as a validation of her sacrifices in going to work.But only days after the additional money started flowing to Ms. Ayala and her colleagues, supervisors told the staff last week that Kroger was shutting down the store because of the hero pay requirement. Kroger also said it was closing a second store in Long Beach. The employees’ union said it had not been told whether Kroger would move the workers to other locations.Bertha Ayala, who works at the Food 4 Less in Long Beach, said the job “has been very stressful.”Credit…Maggie Shannon for The New York Times“Kroger is sending a message, more than anything else,” said Andrea Zinder, president of Local 324 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents about 160 employees at the two stores. “They are trying to intimidate workers and communities: If you pass these types of ordinances, there will be consequences.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More