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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. At the start of the pandemic, grocery store workers and other essential workers in the service industries were hailed as heroes on social media, sometimes, given thanks in person in ways they weren't before. Mayor de Blasio talked about a ticker-tape parade, and occasionally, even often, people even offered hazard pay that wasn't available before.

Now, as the coronavirus crisis continues and people are antsy to return to normal, some retail workers on the front line say that the gratitude and extra money have mostly dried up, but the work, of course, it's still as draining and risky. With us now, and to help invite calls from people who do work in these service industries, is Abha Bhattarai, a reporter covering the retail industry for The Washington Post. Her latest piece is all about this. It's called, "Grocery workers say morale is at an all-time low. They don't even treat us like humans anymore." Abha, thanks for doing this with us. Welcome to WNYC.

Abha Bhattarai: Thanks so much for having me

Brian: That quote, "They don't even treat us like humans anymore," comes from one of the people you interviewed, right?

Abha: It does. I spoke to dozens of workers around the country, and the overarching theme was, like you said, at the beginning of the pandemic, they were hailed as heroes. They felt a real sense of purpose and pride. They were scared about going to work, but they still felt like they had a meaningful role to play. Now, they say all of that has gone away. They're getting it-- The customers are not treating them as well, corporations, they're not treating them as well, they're feeling more desperate, but at the same time, there are no other job options out there

Brian: To get right into what might matter the most to a lot of people, hazard pay. You're right, most retailers have done away with hazard pay, even as workers remain vulnerable to infection or worse. How prevalent has the advent of hazard pay ban over the past months and when did it start to trickle off?

Abha: Back in March and April is when we saw a lot of major companies, almost all of the major chains were offering $2 or $3 extra an hour, some of them were giving lump-sum bonuses instead, but all of that went away in a matter of months. A lot of workers say now that, at the time, they were hopeful. They thought maybe this was going to be a long-term tipping point, that they would finally be treated as essential workers, be paid a living wage, but they didn't expect it to go away so quickly. Now that that hazard pay is gone, they say there's really no hope that they're going to see it again or that conditions are going to improve in any meaningful way.

Brian: How much was hazard pay if there's a numerical answer to that question that, obviously, it's going to be different in different companies? What was the general range? What did people get for being retail workers in grocery stores and other places where they generally get very low pay but had to come to work before they could even really figure out how to control the risk?

Abha: The general hazard pay was about $2 an hour extra on top of what they were making.

Brian: $2 an hour, not much to begin with.

Abha: No, it's not.

Brian: In fact, you reported last week that profits soared by about 80% at both Walmart and Target during the second quarter driven by a surge in online orders. I guess that's different. I don't know. It's not just the people in the retail stores meeting customers, but the risk also pertained to people working in the warehouses, going out, making deliveries, going into who knows what kind of building, all that stuff, right?

Abha: Absolutely, and a lot of warehouse workers say the same thing. They're working in really cramped quarters. It's difficult to be socially distant. They might not be dealing as much with the public and with shoppers that are coming in, but they're still working under very strenuous conditions and there are-- We are hearing reports of COVID cases spreading throughout warehouses.

Brian: Anybody who-- For whom this sounds like you, we're inviting you to call in right now as we continue to cover on this show and give voice to essential workers of various kinds during the pandemic, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Do you work in retail as a "essential worker" maybe at a store that's been open since the start of the pandemic, maybe a grocery store or a big-box store like Target, Sam's Club, Walmart, whatever, maybe you work for Amazon or Whole Foods? How's your morale now, maybe if you're in the delivery portion of things, versus the start of the pandemic?

Did you receive hazard pay at one point? Are you still receiving it? If not, what reason or excuse did your employer use for pulling it away? Anything you want to say about being an essential worker in the retail industry here in the last 3rd of August in 2020? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, we welcome your voices, your stories. The phones are yours. Are you doing work that's outside of your job description like asking customers to wear masks and sanitize and re-sanitize, calming anxious customers, not being compensated for that extra work now that you're a psychologist and social workers too?

Are you noticing a shift in how customers treat you? Are people patient, grateful? Has that become less so over these months of the pandemic, but you're still as frenzied? Anything you want to say along any of these lines? 646-435-7280. What your job is worth, anything? 646-435-7280, with Abha Bhattarai who covers the retail industry for The Washington Post. I bet it's been different for you too, right? You cover the retail industry, suddenly, you're covering life and death.

Abha: Absolutely, yes. I'm used to covering major companies and retailers and it's really become a story about workers, and I think those are the important stories to be telling right now.

Brian: What kinds of stories were you hearing with respect to respect, [chuckles] to put it plainly? How are customers treating the workers you interviewed?

Abha: At the beginning of the pandemic, many of them said customers were stopping them to say, thank you, some of them were bringing them cookies or other snacks, bringing them food to show appreciation. They were really going out of their way to make sure they felt appreciated. In the last few months, I think everybody is just over it. This pandemic is going on for far longer than a lot of people had thought it would. There's no end in sight.

Now, customers are impatient. They're angry if the store shelves are empty. They don't want to be told to stay six feet apart from other shoppers. They don't want to be told to wear a mask, in some cases. The stakes are much higher for the workers. They feel like they're at risk of getting COVID, but also, of angering customers and maybe being on the other side of that. It's just a very fraught position that they've been put into.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. Allison in Salem, New York, in Upper Westchester. Allison, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Allison: Wow, this is amazing. Hi, Brian.

Brian: It's amazing for me. Glad you're on.

Allison: Yes, I am calling, I pulled over, I work later today at two o'clock. I worked for Starbucks. I'm just calling because I very much agree with the sentiment that's being discussed right now. One of the disappointments I want to express is not only in the clientele who's visiting and really not treating us like heroes as maybe we were at the beginning, the business I worked for also has promotions on a freeze.

We've trained people to start as new hires who have quit in the middle of their training because there's very little that is appealing about doing this work. The people who are sticking it out, instead of getting bonuses for office furniture or being told work from home until next year, we're showing up for work every day and not being told that there's more for us to gain by doing our very best, working hard, being kind to people, trying to make their day, offering a bit of normalcy. I feel like a social worker right now. I feel like my job is to create an experience where visitors have something that feels like normal life, and we get no acknowledgment for that.

Brian: The social worker serving your coffee at Starbucks.

Allison: Correct.

Brian: Did you say you got hazard pay at the beginning and they pulled it back?

Allison: Yes, we were given $3 at the beginning. That was eliminated at the start of June. The hazard pay was part of our quarantine and it was also part of our return to work. When it was eliminated in June and some people vocalized, "It really helped me to make ends meet. Actually, now, I have more pride in my job than I had before because I'm being paid a wage that I can potentially live on," we were told that the company had done more than enough, which in its own way was a little insulting because they had done something but you would have to really analyze whether or not, for all people, that's more than enough.

Brian: Allison, good luck out there. Stay safe, stay respected, I hope. Thank you for checking in with us and please do so again. Kay Devine in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Did I say that right as a Kay Devine?

Kay Devine: Yes, you did. I'm Devine. I'm in Dollar Tree. At first, they started giving us $2 an hour. That ended in, I think, the end of April. They gave us little surgical mask, a surgical mask they told us that we had to wear for five days.

Brian: Whoa.

Kay Devine: Now, they've given us cotton cloth mask and they're telling us to be out to wash it. If we come in without the mask, they won't even let us in. They got to see the mask on you to let you inside the store. I'm like, "What if I got my mask in my locker?" I work overnight, so there's very few people outside. I don't always wear a mask because I'm alone. Again, when I got to the door, they were like, "I'm not letting you in because you don't have a mask on."

Brian: Right.

Kay Devine: This is inhuman. They cut our hours, they hired more people. It doesn't make sense what they're doing.

Brian: Why would they cut your hours and hire more people? That seems contradictory? Do you know?

Kay Devine: Exactly. No, I don't. I can't explain it. I was working-- I was doing like 60 hours. This is for like every two weeks. I was making 60-something hours every two weeks. Now, I'm down to 40 hours every two weeks. It's crazy. They're hiring more people. I was having a problem with the buses. They said they was going to give us more buses. They didn't give us more buses in my area. My bus comes two times an hour. If I miss the bus, then, I have to walk. Many times, I walked to work, I made it to work late. Now, they're like, "Oh, you came in late, go home." I'm like, "Wait, there's a pandemic."

Brian: I hear you. Was your store closed for a while? The Dollar Store closest, to me, that I pass-- Go ahead, you go

Kay Devine: That's the beautiful thing. They closed us for a week to clean everything. When we came back and the customer saw us come back and they opened the doors, the customers cheer for us. That felt good. We came in, everyone was good. They was doing extra clean then. They even had people coming in and waxing the floors every day or every other day, excuse me.

Brian: How are the customers to you now?

Kay Devine: They're just regular customers now, back to normal. Some people get argued at, some people get a little-- We get a little crazy customers. We got a little bit of everything. There's still some that still appreciative. They only talk to the cashiers. Us, stocking the shelves, they don't really talk to us. They got a lot of praise for the cashiers.

Brian: Devine, thank you for calling, and please call us again, okay?

Kay Devine: Thank you. Oh wait, wait. I wanted to know, is there a rule or law on the jobs giving us PPEs? Because they don't give gloves. They only give us a mask. That cloth mask got to last-- We got to wash it now. First, we had the surgical mask that- we had to keep one surgical mask for five days. Then, now, we got a cloth mask that we got to wash.

Brian: Then, they gave you cloth and wash it, presumably, every night after your shift. Abha from The Washington Post, do you happen to know what the law is at this point regarding PPEs and workers?

Abha: That's one of the biggest challenges here is that we're in such uncharted territory. The recommendations, the situation is changing so quickly that there are not laws in place, there are not regulations. There are recommendations from the CDC and other organizations, but those are also changing at times. There isn't really a regulatory system in place to make sure that workers are being treated properly or are being given the tools that they need. As we know, a lot of companies were very late in even allowing their workers to wear masks if they wanted too, much less providing masks and gloves at a regular rate.

Brian: Let's take another call. Ralph in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ralph. Ralph, are you there?

Ralph: Hello?

Brian: Is that Ralph in Manhattan?

Ralph: Yes.

Brian: Hey, there. You're on the air, Ralph.

Ralph: Yes, sir. This is Brian Lehrer?

Brian: Yes, it is, sir.

Ralph: Oh, great. Pleasure meeting you, sir.

Brian: And you. What do you do?

Ralph: I'm a truck driver. I work for a prominent gas company. We deliver oxygen and other essential gases to the hospitals, places where the COVID has been in volumes. We never got hazard pay, actually. We tried to get it through our union, but we never heard anything from them again. I was wondering if whoever your guest is could maybe tell us about or give me an idea of going about it and getting it?

Brian: All right. Abha Bhattarai from The Washington Post, I know you're not a union organizer, but can you give our caller any advice?

Abha: I speak frequently with the UFCW, which represents grocery workers, and they're fighting the same battle. They've been calling on some of the country's largest grocery chains to start offering hazard pay again, and they really say it's been difficult. What's changed from the beginning of the pandemic is that when the pandemic first hit, there was a limited supply of workers. There was a sense that you needed to treat everybody well because the chains really needed them. The demand was through the roof, and they needed their workers, they needed to make them feel appreciated.

Now, we have skyrocketing unemployment and there's this overarching sense that employees feel, at least, that they're completely replaceable, that if they want to leave in the middle of their shift, their employer doesn't really care that much because there are so many other people who are desperate for work, so they have less of an incentive to offer hazard pay and other bonuses like that.

Brian: Ralph, thanks for calling. Good luck out there, call us again. Abha, is hazard pay still available in parts of the country where the virus positivity rate is on the rise? We heard from our first caller, who works at Starbucks in Westchester, they had it for a while, they pulled it back. Is it different today? Your beat is national, right? Is it different today in Florida, in Texas, in Arizona?

Abha: I'm not seeing as many geographic differences as I am company to company. Trader Joe's, for example, is offering hazard pay through the end of the year, at least, but workers at Publix in Florida have gotten a handful of gift cards to Publix itself and that's it. That's been the extent of their hazard pay. It really varies company to company.

Brian: We have a Trader Joe's worker calling in, in fact. His name is Joe. Joe from Trader Joe's, you're on WNYC. Hi, Joe.

Joe: Hey, Brian, we'll say my name is Joe.

Brian: [chuckles] I hear you.

Joe: Trader Joe's, they've been very generous with health insurance-wise. We need hourly requirement to keep our insurance, but they grandfathered a bunch of us in for this measurement period, and then, they also offer until the end of October, free telehealth-- Well, not free. You pay $10 copay and we have the telehealth appointments in case anything's up. The company is committed to giving us an extra $2 an hour until the end of the year and that is offset by how they've reduced our hours.

As far as the customers, it's mostly chill. We're seeing more people come in, but they're buying less. Every day, there'll be something, either it's someone who maybe doesn't want to wear a mask or some shoplifting that goes on. There's two kinds of shoplifting, when someone comes in and buys, pulls high-value items that they can flip on the street, and then, there's also like the shops [unintelligible 00:20:02] these people just need food at home for their families.

Brian: It's so sad, isn't it?

Joe: Yes, it's really sad. The grocery store is a real place of community. If people don't have church, if they don't have some other network, and to see it as a place of protest, to see it like-- I don't know. You wonder about people who you don't see come in anymore. How are they doing? Where are they?

Brian: Do you feel safe in the store at this point?

Joe: I feel safe. The management has been very supportive. We're all in the same boat. I feel like management, they can relate, obviously. I think that-- Morale's pretty good. They're doing everything they can for morale. It's tough, but at the same time, I'm very grateful to have a job and some degree of normalcy that's been consistent through this whole thing.

Brian: Let me ask you one more mundane question, what can't you keep on the shelves? What are there still shortages of?

Joe: That's been resolved pretty well. When there are shortages, it'll be a shortage of something like mayonnaise or cheeses or things that need- like butterfat, some dairy. That was a problem, like burrata, mozzarella balls, things like that. As far as people, we've been able to keep up with people's demand. It's the production that can cause some shortages.

Brian: Thank you so much for calling in. That's fairly positive report from a Trader Joe's employee compared to some of the other things we've been hearing. Does that comport with your reporting around the country or about a company?

Abha: Yes, definitely. There are some chains where the workers seem to be happier than others. Mom-and-pop shops, generally, I hear from workers there who say that they're pretty happy and they feel like they're being appreciated. It does vary from store to store and chain the chain.

Brian: I know Whole Foods made a new uniform for some of its workers, a t-shirt that says hero on the front and hardcore on the back, but they ended their hazard pay in June. A lot of other corporations also put out social media campaigns thanking delivery people and other workers, how receptive were the workers you talked to about this performative type of corporate gratitude if I can call it performative? Maybe there's something heartwarming about it but maybe there's something also really icky.

Abha: Most of the ones that I spoke to were pretty resentful. They called it lip service. They said they were spending-- They felt like their companies were spending all of this money putting out this message when they could have really spent that money to help their workers, and they felt like that was very misplaced.

Brian: Let's take one more hazard pay call. Bill in Somerville, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bill.

Bill: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I work for a major supermarket chain in New Jersey. I'm an associate stocking shelves. I just wanted to report that during the time when the hazard pay was when we were getting $2 hazard pay that my hours were cut. Essentially, I took a pay cut for about six to eight weeks. I went from 28, 32 hours a week to 20, even 19 hours a week.

Brian: Was that one of those situations where they reduced everybody's hours so they wouldn't have to lay off people or lay off as many people?

Bill: I didn't hear that, so I don't know. I heard that the reason was that the department's budget was not raised to accommodate that, but the cut in hours was way more than the $2 in hazard pay.

Brian: I hear you.

Bill: I'm just saying the customers who are sometimes even overly nice and the other ones who aren't nice at all don't seem to have a sense of what's behind or below the surface in the running of these companies and how things work.

Brian: Thanks for your call. Thanks for just saying what you were saying. As we run out of time with Abha Bhattarai, Washington Post retail beat correspondent, what does the future hold, or what at least are the questions as we go into the next phase?

Abha: It's a big unknown, especially as we approach the holiday season and all of the ups and downs that might come with that. A number of the callers mentioned scheduling issues and that's something that I really hear across the board. Either workers are getting their hours cut drastically for various reasons, either cost-cutting or because these companies panicked and hired a bunch of new people and they don't want to lose them, so they're trying to spread everybody thin for now, or they're seeing the flip side of that. People are just quitting mid-shift, they're quitting in droves, and the ones who are left are being asked to do more and more and work maybe mandatory five or six days a week, 12-hour shifts, that sort of thing. We're just seeing this real system that's out of whack in many ways and it's going to be a while before it comes back to normal.

Brian: Abha, thanks so much for your reporting and for sharing with us.

Abha: Thank you so much.

 

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