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Who’s to Blame for a Factory Shutdown: A Company, or California?

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VERNON, Calif. — Teresa Robles begins her shift around dawn most days at a pork processing plant in an industrial corridor four miles south of downtown Los Angeles. She spends eight hours on her feet cutting tripe, a repetitive motion that has given her constant joint pain, but also a $17.85-an-hour income that supports her family.So in early June, when whispers began among the 1,800 workers that the facility would soon shut down, Ms. Robles, 57, hoped they were only rumors.“But it was true,” she said somberly at the end of a recent shift, “and now each day inches a little closer to my last day.”  The 436,000-square-foot factory, with roots dating back nearly a century, is scheduled to close early next year. Its Virginia-based owner, Smithfield Foods, says it will be cheaper to supply the region from factories in the Midwest than to continue operations here.“Unfortunately, the escalating costs of doing business in California required this decision,” said Shane Smith, the chief executive of Smithfield, citing utility rates and a voter-approved law regulating how pigs can be housed.Workers and company officials see a larger economic lesson in the impending shutdown. They just differ on what it is. To Ms. Robles, it is evidence that despite years of often perilous work, “we are just disposable to them.” For the meatpacker, it is a case of politics and regulation trumping commerce.The cost of doing business in California is a longtime point of contention. It was cited last year when Tesla, the electric-vehicle maker that has been a Silicon Valley success story, announced that it was moving its headquarters to Texas. “There’s a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area,” said Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, mentioning housing prices and long commutes.As with many economic arguments, this one can take on a partisan hue.Around the time of Tesla’s exit, a report by the conservative-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford University found that California-based companies were leaving at an accelerating rate. In the first six months of last year, 74 headquarters relocated from California, according to the report. In 2020, the report found, 62 companies were known to have relocated.Dee Dee Myers, a senior adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, counters by pointing to California’s continued economic growth.“Every time this narrative comes up, it’s consistently disproven by the facts,” said Ms. Myers, director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. The nation’s gross domestic product grew at an annual pace of 2 percent over a five-year period through 2021, according to Ms. Myers’s office, while California’s grew by 3.7 percent. The state is still the country’s tech capital.Still, manufacturing has declined more rapidly in California than in the nation as a whole. Since 1990, the state has lost a third of its factory jobs — it now has roughly 1.3 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — compared with a 28 percent decline nationwide.The Smithfield plant is an icon of California’s industrial heyday. In 1931, Barney and Francis Clougherty, brothers who grew up in Los Angeles and the sons of Irish immigrants, started a meatpacking business that soon settled in Vernon. Their company, later branded as Farmer John, became a household name in Southern California, recognized for producing the beloved Dodger Dog and al pastor that sizzled at backyard cookouts. During World War II, the company supplied rations to U.S. troops in the Pacific.Leo Velasquez, 62, started working at the plant in 1990. He had hoped to stay there until he was ready to retire.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesAlmost 20 years later, Les Grimes, a Hollywood set painter, was commissioned to create a mural at the plant, transforming a bland industrial structure into a pastoral landscape where young children chased cherubic-looking pigs. It became a sightseeing destination.More recently, it has also been a symbol of the state’s social and political turbulence.In explaining Smithfield’s decision to close the plant, Mr. Smith, the chief executive, and other company officials have pointed to a 2018 statewide ballot measure, Proposition 12, which requires that pork sold in the state come from breeding pigs housed in spaces that allow them to move more freely.The measure is not yet being enforced and faces a challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court this fall. If it is not overturned, the law will apply even to meat packed outside the state — the way Smithfield now plans to supply the local market — but company officials say that in any case, its passage reflects a climate inhospitable to pork production in California.Passions have sometimes run high outside the plant as animal rights activists have condemned the confinement and treatment of the pigs being slaughtered inside. Protesters have serenaded and provided water to pigs whose snouts stuck out of slats in arriving trucks.In addition to its objections to Proposition 12, Smithfield maintains that the cost of utilities is nearly four times as high per head to produce pork in California than at the company’s 45 other plants around the country, though it declined to say how it arrived at that estimate.John Grant, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, which represents Ms. Robles and other workers at the plant, said Smithfield announced the closing just as the sides were to begin negotiating a new contract. “They’re kicking us out with no answers,” said Teresa Robles, who has worked at the factory for four years.Mark Abramson for The New York Times“A total gut punch and, frankly, a shock,” said Mr. Grant, who worked at the plant in the 1970s. He said wage increases were a priority for the union going into negotiations. The company has offered a $7,500 bonus to employees who stay through the closing and has raised the hourly wage, previously $19.10 at the top of the scale, to $23.10. (The rate at the company’s unionized Midwest plants is still a bit higher.)But Mr. Grant said the factory shutdown was an affront to his members, who toiled through the pandemic as essential workers. Smithfield was fined nearly $60,000 by California regulators in 2020 for failing to take adequate measures to protect workers from contracting coronavirus.“After all that the employees have done throughout the pandemic, they’re now all of a sudden going to flee? They’re destroying lives,” said Mr. Grant, adding that the union is working to find new jobs for workers and hopes to help find a buyer for the plant.Karen Chapple, a professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, said the closing was an example of “the larger trend of deindustrialization” in areas like Los Angeles. “It probably doesn’t make sense to be here from an efficiency perspective,” she said. “It’s the tail end of a long exodus.”Indeed, the number of food manufacturing jobs in Los Angeles County has declined 6 percent since 2017, according to state data.  And as those jobs are shed, workers like Ms. Robles wonder what will come next.More than 80 percent of the employees at the Smithfield plant are Latino — a mix of immigrants and first-generation native-born. Most are older than 50. The security and benefits have kept people in their jobs, union leaders say, but the nature of the labor has made it hard to recruit younger workers who have better alternatives.On a recent overcast morning, the air in Vernon was thick with the smell of ammonia. Workers wearing surgical masks and carrying goggles and helmets walked into the plant. The sound of forklifts hummed beyond a high fence.Massive warehouses line the streets in the area. Some sit vacant; others produce wholesale local baked goods and candies. Mario Melendez, who has worked at the plant for a decade, says he feels betrayed by the company.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesMs. Robles started at the Smithfield plant four years ago. For more than two decades she owned a small business selling produce in downtown Los Angeles. She loved her work, but when her brother died in 2018, she needed money to honor his wish to have his body sent from Southern California to Colima, Mexico, their hometown. She sold the business for a couple of thousand dollars, then started at the factory, making $14 an hour.“I was proud,” she said, recalling the early months at her new job.Ms. Robles is the sole provider for her family. Her husband has several health complications, including surviving a heart attack in recent months, so she now shoulders the $2,000 mortgage payment for their home in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Sometimes her 20-year-old son, who recently started working at the plant, helps with expenses.“But this is my responsibility — it is on me to provide,” she said.Ms. Robles has long recited the Lord’s Prayer every night before bed, and now she often finds herself repeating it throughout the day for strength.“They’re kicking us out with no answers,” she said.Other workers, like Mario Melendez, 67, who has worked at the plant for a decade, shares that unmoored feeling.It’s an honor to know his labor helps feed people across Southern California, he said — especially around the holidays, when the factory’s ribs, ham and hot dogs will be part of people’s celebrations.But the factory is also a place where he contracted coronavirus, which he passed along to his brother, who died of the virus, as did his mother. He was devastated.A truck carrying pigs entering the plant. Animal rights activists have sometimes protested outside.Mark Abramson for The New York Times“A terrible shock,” said Mr. Melendez, who says he feels betrayed by the company.So does Leo Velasquez.He started on the night shift in 1990, making $7 an hour to package and seal bacon. A few years later, he moved to days, working 10-hour shifts.“I’ve given my life to this place,” said Mr. Velasquez, 62.Over the years, his body began to wear down. In 2014, he had shoulder replacement surgery. Still, he had hoped to continue at the factory until he was ready to retire.“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “Where I go from here, I do not know.” More

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    Business Booms at Kroger-Owned Grocery Stores, but Workers Are Left Behind

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    A number of the stores’ nearly 500,000 employees have reported being homeless, receiving government food stamps or relying on food banks.When Enrique Romero Jr. finishes his shift fulfilling online orders at a Fred Meyer grocery store in Bellingham, Wash., he often walks to a nearby plasma donation center. There, he has his blood drained, and a hydrating solution is pumped into his veins, a process that leaves him tired and cold.Mr. Romero, 30, said selling his plasma made him feel “like cattle.” But the income he earns from it — roughly $500 a month — is more reliable than his wages at Fred Meyer, which is owned by the grocery giant Kroger. His part-time hours often fluctuate, and he struggles to find enough money to cover his rent, his groceries and the regular repairs required to keep his 2007 Chevy Aveo on the road.“The economy we have is grueling,” he said.Business has boomed during the pandemic for Kroger, the biggest supermarket chain in the United States and the fourth-largest employer in the Fortune 500. It owns more than 2,700 locations, and its brands include Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, Ralphs, Smith’s, Pick ’n Save and even Murray’s Cheese in New York City. The company, which is based in Cincinnati, said in December that it was expecting sales growth of at least 13.7 percent over two years. The company’s stock has risen about 36 percent over the past year.But that success has not trickled down to its vast work force of nearly 500,000 employees, a number of whom have reported being homeless, receiving government food stamps or relying on food banks to feed their families. A brief strike in Colorado last month by workers, represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, at dozens of Kroger-owned King Soopers locations brought renewed scrutiny to the issues of pay and working conditions for grocery workers, who have been on the front lines throughout the pandemic.Because his part-time hours are not guaranteed, Mr. Romero said he struggled to pay rent.Jovelle Tamayo for The New York TimesThe Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research group that surveyed more than 10,000 Kroger workers in Washington, Colorado and Southern California about their working conditions for a report commissioned by four units of the food workers union, found that about 75 percent of Kroger workers said they were food insecure, meaning they lacked consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. About 14 percent said they were homeless or had been homeless in the previous year, and 63 percent said they did not earn enough money to pay for basic expenses every month.“There is a race to the bottom that’s been going on for a while with Walmart and other large retail stores, and also restaurants, and to reverse that trend is not easy,” said Daniel Flaming, president of the Economic Roundtable.Kroger was the sole employer for 86 percent of those surveyed, partly because more than half had schedules that changed at least every week, making it difficult to commit to another employer. About two-thirds said they were part-time workers, even though they wanted more hours. Keeping workers part time is a strategy employers use to encourage turnover and reduce costs.Kristal Howard, a spokeswoman for Kroger, said the report was “one-dimensional and does not tell the complete story.”“Kroger has provided an incredible number of people with their first job, second chances and lifelong careers, and we’re proud to play this role in our communities,” she said. Ms. Howard added that the company had raised its national average hourly rate of pay to $16.68 from $13.66 in 2017, a 22 percent increase, and that its benefits package included health care, retirement savings, tuition assistance and on-demand access to mental health assistance.Some of the workers said that even though other retailers and fast food restaurants had started offering higher starting wages than Kroger, the company’s health insurance and retirement benefits, which the union negotiated, were more generous than what other employers offered. Other part-time Kroger workers say they stay on the job because they don’t want to lose their seniority and the chance for a full-time role.Despite some of the wage increases and benefits, working at a grocery store no longer provides the stable income and middle-class lifestyle that it did 30 years ago, workers say. The Economic Roundtable report studied contracts dating back to 1990 and said the most experienced clerks — known as journeymen — in Southern California made roughly $28 per hour in today’s dollars while working full-time schedules. Wages for top-paid clerks today are 22 percent lower, and those workers are far more likely to be working part-time hours.Ashley Manning, a 32-year-old floral manager at a Ralphs in San Pedro, Calif., works full time but is regularly strapped for cash. Ms. Manning, the single mother of a 12-year-old, said she had worked at Ralphs for nine years and earned $18.25 an hour. It took her four years to reach full-time status, which guarantees 40 hours per week and comes with an annual bonus ranging from $500 to $3,000.It took Ashley Manning four years to become a full-time worker at Ralphs, and even now she struggles to pay for basic living expenses. Philip Cheung for The New York TimesShe said she struggled to pay rent and moved into her grandmother’s house after being evicted last spring. She has needed help from her family to help pay for a car. She has tried to make extra money through a party planning and decorating business, but demand for those services dried up in the pandemic.“I would think, ‘I have a good job and make decent money,’ and I don’t,” Ms. Manning said. “I’m still on the poverty level.”During the pandemic, grocery store workers have been recognized as essential to keeping society going, but they have also faced health risks. At least 50,600 grocery workers around the country have been infected with or exposed to the coronavirus, and at least 213 have died from the virus, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.Ms. Manning was hospitalized for Covid-19 last summer. She blames herself for her grandmother’s subsequent death from the virus in August.“She was one of the people that would help me the most, if I was short on a bill or needed help, to pick my daughter up from school,” she said. But when her grandmother was in critical condition, Ms. Manning said, she was told that she couldn’t take more time off after being sick with Covid-19.The illness and the company’s response were jarring, given that corporate workers had the flexibility to work from home, she said, adding that she ultimately took disability leave for a stretch.Kroger has one of the country’s starkest gaps between a chief executive’s compensation and that of the median employee. Rodney McMullen, Kroger’s chief executive since 2014, earned $22.4 million in 2020, while the median employee earned $24,617 — a ratio of 909 to 1. The average C.E.O.-to-worker pay ratio in the S&P 500 is 299 to 1, with grocery chains like Costco (193 to 1) and Publix (153 to 1) lower than that.These disparities have fomented outrage among employees, who are also dealing with issues like fights over masks and theft and violence in stores.King Soopers grocery store workers in Denver went on a strike last month over wages and working conditions.Michael Ciaglo/Getty ImagesIn Colorado, more than 8,000 workers at the Kroger-owned King Soopers chain walked off the job last month when union contract negotiations broke down over wages, employee safety issues and scheduling.Around the time of the strike, a nonprofit publication, A More Perfect Union, published an internal Kroger document in which the company acknowledged that one in five of its employees received government assistance in 2017. The document also included research showing that employee turnover was lower in places where it raised wages.In response, Kroger said it had developed an improvement plan after the analysis, which included the wage increase and steps to improve tuition assistance and retirement benefits. The company commissioned its own study that stated last month that Kroger’s average pay and benefits in Colorado and three other Western states were higher than those of other retailers.After more than a week of picketing, the union — Local 7 of the U.F.C.W. — won large concessions, including wage increases of more than $5A an hour for some workers and a plan to move at least 500 part-time workers into full-time roles within a few months.As successful as the strike was for workers in Colorado, Larry Cohen, former president of the Communications Workers of America, said the contracts covered only employees at specific Kroger chains, making it difficult for unions to gain broader leverage.“When all contracts are local, how do you deal with a giant national company?” Mr. Cohen said. “Not very well.”Kroger has tightly controlled labor expenses during the pandemic. The company offered hero pay and thank-you bonuses to workers in the early months of the pandemic but ended those well before vaccinations were available. (Grocery workers were also not given priority for vaccinations in many states.) While some municipalities like Los Angeles and Seattle sought to institute hazard pay mandates, Kroger and grocery lobbying associations fought such efforts.Workers protested outside a Kroger-owned Food 4 Less store in California that was closed after the local government mandated hazard pay for grocery employees.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesKroger’s resistance to wage increases peaked last year when the Los Angeles City Council approved a hazard pay mandate requiring large grocers and pharmacies to pay employees an additional $5 an hour for four months. In response, Kroger said it would close three stores in the area in May — two Ralphs locations and a Food 4 Less — blaming increased costs. The company pointed to a release at the time that said the stores were underperforming. But City Council members were left with the sense that the closures were retaliatory.Paul Koretz, a member of the Council, said he had dealt with backlash from some constituents about the impending closing of a Ralphs in his district, a go-to for the local Orthodox Jewish community. He said Ralphs representatives had warned him that they would close the store if the mandate was instituted.“I’m not sure I really believed that Ralphs would do it,” he said. “It just seemed so counterintuitive that you would mess with your very loyal customers.”Shoppers in his district have adapted since the store closed. But he said he believed that the impact of the closings on employees and Council members’ fear of angering constituents probably had a chilling effect on other municipalities that were considering similar measures. The mandated hazard pay gave many Kroger workers a glimpse of how their day-to-day lives could improve with more money. Areli Rivas, a part-time cashier at a Ralphs in Van Nuys, Calif., who is married to a full-time worker at the store, said the extra pay gave her “peace of mind.”“The economy we have is grueling,” said Mr. Romero, outside the Fred Meyer store where he works.Jovelle Tamayo for The New York TimesThe mother of two said it was hard to justify purchases like a new backpack for her son, even though his current one is fraying. More pay would also allow her to get her daughter a new glasses prescription.Some workers like Ms. Manning said that they couldn’t afford to shop at their store and that the employee discount of 10 percent applied only to Kroger-branded goods and did not always include produce and other essentials.Kroger said that the discount covered 19,000 private-label food products and that it did include dairy, proteins and produce.Pio Figueroa, 25, who has been working at a Ralphs in Laguna Beach, Calif., for about six years, said he was able to manage his monthly expenses now that he was among the highest earners in his store, making about $22.50 an hour. But at one point, he was making $15 or $16 per hour at the chain and struggled mightily.“There were times I could only budget to spend $100 on food and everything a week,” he said. “So there were times I would go without a meal or definitely think, ‘What am I going to eat tonight?’” More

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    Despite Labor Shortages, Workers See Few Gains in Economic Security

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    Over the past two months, Brenda Garcia, who works at a Chipotle in Queens, has struggled to land more than 20 hours per week, making it difficult to keep up with her expenses. When she confronts her manager, he vows to try to find her more work, but the problem invariably persists. In one recent week, the store scheduled her for a single 6.25-hour shift.“It’s not enough for me — they’re not giving me a stable job,” said Ms. Garcia, whose work involves chopping vegetables and other tasks before burritos are assembled. “They’re not giving me the hours and the days I’m supposed to be getting.”Ms. Garcia’s limited hours are not unusual at Chipotle, which has a largely part-time work force. A weekly schedule at her store from early January showed at least a dozen workers with fewer than 20 hours and several with fewer than 15.With workers nationwide quitting at high rates and companies complaining that they can’t fill jobs, employers might be expected to rethink their dependence on part-time scheduling. While some employees prefer the flexibility, many say it leaves them with too few hours, too little income or erratic hours.But that rethinking does not appear to have happened. Government data show that in retail businesses, the portion of workers on part-time schedules last year stood about where it was just before the pandemic, and that it increased somewhat in hospitality industries like restaurants and hotels.In a twice-yearly survey by Daniel Schneider, a Harvard sociologist, and Kristen Harknett, a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, one-quarter of workers at large retailers and restaurant chains said they were scheduled 35 hours a week or less and wanted more hours. That was down from about one-third in 2019, but the change was driven by a decline in the number of workers wanting more hours, most likely because of pandemic health risks and work-life conflicts, not because employers were providing more hours.Even as employers complain of having to scramble to fill vacancies, there is little evidence that service workers are winning any meaningful, long-term gains. While businesses have raised wages, those increases can be easily eroded by inflation, if they haven’t been already. The overall national rate of membership in unions — which can obtain wage increases for workers even absent labor shortages — matched its lowest level on record last year.Limited work hours are not unusual at Chipotle, which has a largely part-time work force.Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesAnd the unpredictable schedules that arise when employers constantly adjust staffing in response to customer demand, something that is common among part-timers, are roughly as prevalent as before the pandemic. The survey by Dr. Schneider and Dr. Harknett found that about two-thirds of workers continue to receive less than two weeks’ notice of their schedules.“Companies are doing all they can not to bake in any gains that are difficult to claw back,” Dr. Schneider said. “Workers’ labor market power is so far not yielding durable dividends.”The changes that make work lower paying, less stable and generally more precarious date back to the 1960s and ’70s, when the labor market evolved in two key ways. First, companies began pushing more work outside the firm — relying increasingly on contractors, temps and franchisees, a practice known as “fissuring.”Second, many businesses that continued to employ workers directly began hiring them to part-time positions, rather than full-time roles, particularly in the retail and hospitality industries.According to the scholars Chris Tilly of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Françoise Carré of the University of Massachusetts Boston, the initial impetus for the shift to part-time work was the mass entry of women into the work force, including many who preferred part-time positions so they could be home when children returned from school.Before long, however, employers saw an advantage in hiring part-timers and deliberately added more. “A light bulb went on one day,” Dr. Tilly said. “‘If we’re expanding part-time schedules, we don’t have to offer benefits, we can offer a lower wage rate.’”By the late 1980s, employers had begun using scheduling software to forecast customer demand and staffed accordingly. Having a large portion of part-time workers, who could be given more hours when stores got busy and fewer hours when business slowed, helped enable this practice, known as just-in-time scheduling.But the arrangement subjected workers to fluctuating schedules and unreliable hours, disrupting their personal lives, their sleep, even their children’s brain development.Nonetheless, the model continued to spread, and the shift to a heavily part-time work force was largely complete across retail by the mid-1990s.A recent study commissioned by Kroger found that about 70 percent of the supermarket company’s nearly 85,000 store employees in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington State were part time. A survey of more than 10,000 Kroger workers on behalf of four union locals by the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research group, found widespread evidence of just-in-time scheduling, with more than half of workers reporting that their schedules changed at least weekly.Kroger, one of the nation’s largest employers, said in a statement that many of its employees sought part-time jobs for their flexibility and for health care benefits that competitors didn’t offer, as well as for opportunities for upward mobility. “We provide hundreds of thousands of people with first jobs (think baggers, cashiers, stockers, etc.), second chances, retirement employment, college gigs,” the statement said.The company added that locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers union had negotiated and agreed to the relevant provisions of its labor contracts for decades.A spokeswoman for Chipotle, where Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ is helping workers organize, likewise said that managers and employees mutually agreed on hours and that the company enabled employees to pick up additional shifts at other New York City stores when they were available.But the practices remain contentious. In mid-January, more than 8,000 Denver-area workers at King Soopers, a supermarket chain owned by Kroger, went on strike, citing the lack of full-time employment as a key issue.Workers picketing during a strike at King Soopers in Denver. A key issue was the lack of full-time employment.Michael Ciaglo/Getty ImagesRenae Vigil, who works in the meat department at a King Soopers in Denver and serves as a union steward, said many of her colleagues would like to work full time so that “they wouldn’t be worried about how to pay bills, how to get this or that paid, but at King’s, it’s like winning a lotto.”The frustrations suggest a relatively straightforward way for employers to reduce labor shortages: Offer more full-time positions.But Kim Cordova, president of U.F.C.W. Local 7, which represents the King Soopers workers, said employers like Kroger were rarely moved by this logic. “They’ve told us they think the market is going to correct itself, this is temporary and they don’t want to lock themselves into changing permanently,” she said. The food workers union estimated that King Soopers had 2,400 unfilled Denver-area jobs early this year.While the strike ended last month, after the company committed to raise pay, contribute more to health benefits and add at least 500 full-time positions, a majority of King Soopers workers are likely to remain on part-time schedules. Most retail and restaurant workers, who lack a union to organize a strike and provide strike pay, may have a harder time winning such changes.Susan Lambert, a social work scholar at the University of Chicago who studies employers’ scheduling practices, said she and a colleague had recently interviewed store managers in Seattle and Chicago and found that some had, in fact, sought to provide more consistent schedules during the pandemic.The change was driven by a combination of data, showing that more humane scheduling practices need not undermine profitability, and a desire by some employers to retain workers amid labor shortages, Dr. Lambert said. But she conceded that the changes were mostly at the margins.“There are not major investments in changing major systems,” she said.Data collected by the Labor Department indicate that the amount of part-time work in the retail and hospitality industries remains far above where it stood in the early 1970s. The same appears to be true of companies’ reliance on contractors and temps, which scholars say has helped weaken wage growth over the past several decades.Employers who outsource work to contractors or temps do not appear to have rethought those arrangements as a result of the pandemic, said Susan Houseman, a labor economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. She pointed to the temporary help industry’s return to close to its prepandemic share of employment and an increase in self-employment during the past two years.Gig companies whose apps allow people to find work as independent contractors say they have had an increase in workers over the last year or two. According to Uber, the number of drivers and couriers working through its service in a given month grew roughly 70 percent from January to October last year, or nearly 640,000.DoorDash said the number of people working through its delivery app as of the fall quarter had more than doubled during the pandemic, to over three million, and Instacart said the number of full-service shoppers on its service — those who shop for and deliver groceries — had increased by more than two and a half times, to over 500,000.The companies say that workers who use their apps value the flexibility of gig work, and that it helps sustain people during fallow periods or in places where work can be hard to find, such as rural communities. But gig jobs typically lack a variety of benefits and protections, like a minimum wage, and can reinforce economic insecurity.To Dr. Schneider, the Harvard sociologist, the insecurity that service workers continue to face during the pandemic, supposedly a period of unusual leverage, shows how resistant their industries are to changing.“I think it exposes something about how attached employers are to this just-in-time model,” he said. “This is something that goes to the heart of their business models.” More

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    Companies Begin to Mandate Covid Vaccines for Employees

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    Tyson and Microsoft were the latest to require employees to be vaccinated. Other major employers have tried less sweeping approaches.Some of the nation’s largest employers, for months reluctant to wade into the fraught issue of whether Covid-19 vaccinations should be mandatory for workers, have in recent days been compelled to act as infections have surged again.On Tuesday, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 workers in offices, slaughterhouses and poultry plants across the country that they would need to be vaccinated by Nov. 1 as a “condition of employment.” And Microsoft, which employs roughly 100,000 people in the United States, said it would require proof of vaccination for all employees, vendors and guests to gain access to its offices.Last week, Google said it would require employees who returned to the company’s offices to be vaccinated, while Disney announced a mandate for all salaried and nonunion hourly workers who work on site.Other companies, including Walmart, the largest private employer in the United States, and Lyft and Uber, have taken a less forceful approach, mandating vaccines for white-collar workers but not for millions of frontline workers. Those moves essentially set up a divide between the employees who work in offices and employees who deal directly with the public and, collectively, have been more reluctant to get the shots.“We did not take this decision lightly,” Tyson’s chief executive, Donnie King, wrote in a memo to employees announcing the company’s full mandate. “We have spent months encouraging our team members to get vaccinated — today, under half of our team members are.”The moves brought praise from the White House.“I want to thank Walmart, Google, Netflix, Disney, Tyson Foods for their recent actions requiring vaccination for employees,” President Biden said in a press briefing on Tuesday. “Look, I know this isn’t easy — but I will have their backs.”“Others have declined to step up,” he said. “I find it disappointing.”Indeed, most other big employers have so far avoided mandates entirely. Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the country, has not announced any plans to require immunizations, nor has Apple or many of the biggest banks.“We are strongly working to get our employees vaccinated,” Amazon’s chief financial officer, Brian Olsavsky, said in a call with reporters last week, “and we hope everyone else gets vaccinated and this goes away.”Amazon has encouraged employees to get vaccinated but says it has no plans to mandate that they do.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe coronavirus, however, shows no signs of going away. With vaccination rates stagnating in many parts of the country and the Delta variant surging, a new wave of infections is forcing businesses to act.“The rise of the Delta variant is on people’s minds,” said Douglas Brayley, an employment lawyer at Ropes & Gray. “I think they are looking around and seeing a greater number of employers start to mandate, and so they’re wondering whether they should reconsider as well.”But vaccine hesitancy remains an entrenched and emotionally charged issue inside many American workplaces.Many companies, already facing staffing shortages, are worried that requiring vaccines could give employees another reason to quit. At the same time, companies are struggling for new ways to encourage workers to get vaccinated after efforts like offering cash bonuses did not boost immunization rates quickly enough.Much of the remaining hesitancy to vaccines appears to be rooted in a complex mix of politics, cultural beliefs and misinformation that no cash payment or gift certificate from an employer can overcome.“The reason many workers are refusing the vaccine has been for political and ideological reasons,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which represents workers in food factories in the Midwest, where vaccination rates are relatively low. “In places where we have the largest number of Trump supporters is where we are seeing a large number of vaccine resisters.”But many unions are wary of mandates for a different set of reasons that are not primarily political. They say many of their members are worried about potential health side effects or bristle at the idea of an employer’s interfering in what they regard as a personal health decision.Marc Perrone, the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, representing 1.3 million employees in grocery chains such as Kroger and at large meatpacking plants, said he would not support employer mandates until the Food and Drug Administration gave full approval to the vaccine, which is being administered on an emergency basis.“You can’t just say, ‘Accept the mandate or hit the door,’” Mr. Perrone said in an interview on Monday.After Tyson announced its vaccine mandate on Tuesday, Mr. Perrone issued a statement that the union “will be meeting with Tyson in the coming weeks to discuss this vaccine mandate and to ensure that the rights of these workers are protected and this policy is fairly implemented.”Tyson Foods will give its frontline employees until Nov. 1 to be fully inoculated.John Konstantaras/Associated PressAsked whether he supported vaccine mandates, Mr. Appelbaum said, “I am not prepared to answer that yet.” But he did say that companies needed to closely negotiate the terms of any such requirements with workers and that they also needed to expand benefits, such as paid sick time, for workers during the pandemic.Together, Mr. Perrone’s and Mr. Appelbaum’s unions represent more than 30,000 workers in Tyson plants, which complicates the meat company’s plans for a mandate.Tyson and others in the meatpacking industry were criticized during the pandemic’s early stages for not doing enough to protect workers as several meat plants became virus hot spots. Now, it is requiring its leadership team to be vaccinated by Sept. 24 and the rest of its office workers by Oct. 1. Frontline employees have until Nov. 1 to be fully inoculated, extra time the company is providing because there are “significantly more frontline team members than office workers who still need to be vaccinated,” a Tyson spokesman said.Throughout the pandemic, companies have treaded carefully in carrying out public health measures while trying to avoid harm to their businesses.Last year, when major retailers began requiring customers to wear masks, they quietly told their employees not to enforce the rule if a customer was adamant about not wearing one.Companies like Walmart have tried a similarly tentative approach with vaccine requirements.Walmart announced last week that it was requiring the roughly 17,000 workers in its Arkansas headquarters to be vaccinated but not those in stores and distribution centers, who make up the bulk of its 1.6 million U.S. employees.In a statement, the retailer said the limited mandate would send a message to all workers that they should get vaccinated.“We’re asking our leaders, which already have a higher vaccination rate, to make their example clear,” the company said. “We’re hoping that will influence even more of our frontline associates to become vaccinated.”Workers at Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco must be vaccinated, but its drivers do not have to be.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesUber and Lyft told their corporate employees last week that they would need to show proof they had been inoculated before returning to company offices.Requiring vaccinations “is the most effective way to create a safe environment and give our team members peace of mind as we return to the office,” said Ashley Adams, a spokeswoman for Lyft.But those mandates did not extend to the workers the companies contract with to drive millions of customers to and from their destinations. The drivers are being encouraged to be vaccinated, but neither Lyft or Uber has plans to require them.Public health experts warn that limited mandates may reinforce the gaping divide between the nation’s high- and low-wage workers without furthering the public health goal of substantially increasing vaccination rates.They also say it’s naïve to think that workers who resisted vaccines for ideological reasons would suddenly change their mind after seeing a company’s higher-paid executives receive the shots.“Ultimately we want to ensure that they really have the broadest reach,” Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, the vice dean for population health and health equity at the University of California, San Francisco, said of company directives. “Failing to do that, I think, will only cause others to be more suspicious of these types of mandates.”Legally, companies are likely to be on solid ground if they mandate vaccines. Last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said employers could require immunization, though companies that do could still face lawsuits.George W. Ingham, a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells, said companies with mandates would potentially have to make difficult decisions.“They are going to have to fire high performers and low performers who refuse vaccines,” he said. “They have to be consistent.” Reasons an employee could be exempted include religious beliefs or a disability, though the process of sorting those out on an individual basis promises to be an arduous one.Companies may also have to contend with pushback from state governments. Ten states have passed legislation limiting the ability to require vaccines for students, employees or the public, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.Disney is among the few big companies pursuing a broad vaccine mandate for their work forces, even in the face of pushback from some employees.Roughly 38,000 workers at Walt Disney World in Florida are unionized. The company’s vaccine mandate does not apply to them.Todd Anderson for The New York TimesIn addition to mandating vaccines for nonunion workers who are on-site, Disney said all new hires — union and nonunion — would be required to be fully vaccinated before starting their jobs. Nonunion hourly workers include theme park guest-relations staff, in-park photographers, executive assistants and some seasonal theme park employees.It was the furthest that Disney could go without a sign-off from the dozen unions that represent the bulk of its employees. Walt Disney World in Florida, for instance, has more than 65,000 workers; roughly 38,000 are union members.Disney is now seeking union approval for the mandate both in Florida and in California, where tens of thousands of workers at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim are unionized. Most of the leaders of Disney’s unions appear to be in favor of a mandate — as long as accommodations can be worked out for those refusing the vaccine for medical, religious or other acceptable reasons.“Vaccinations are safe and effective and the best line of defense to protect workers, frontline or otherwise,” Eric Clinton, the president of UNITE HERE Local 362, which represents roughly 8,000 attraction workers and custodians at Disney World, said in a phone interview.Mr. Clinton declined to comment on any pushback from his membership, but another union leader at Disney World, speaking on the condition of anonymity so he could speak candidly, said “a fair number” of his members were up in arms over Disney-mandated vaccinations, citing personal choice and fear of the vaccine.“The company has probably done a calculation and decided that some people will unfortunately quit rather than protect themselves, and so be it,” the person said.Lananh Nguyen 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