They join a citywide effort among grocery store employees demanding increased pay and better safety precautions during the pandemic
When the coronavirus pandemic spurred citywide closures in early March, New Seasons Market provided its employees with “Thank You” bonus pay for nearly four months. Now, workers are asking to have it reinstated, but the grocery chain claims the move would be unsustainable.
“While we don’t share our financials, we can confirm that expenses related to COVID-19, including Thank You bonuses, have had a significant impact on the financial state of the company,” Julie Teune, who manages communications at New Seasons, stated in an email to Street Roots Friday.
On the afternoon of Thursday, Aug. 20, more than a dozen organizers and local grocery store employees gathered outside New Seasons’ Concordia store on Northeast 33rd Avenue to rally for worker demands, which include reinstating the bonus pay and reducing the amount of customers allowed in each store at a time.
Cars passing by honked in solidarity with the cause, and at one point a New Seasons employee emerged from the store to shout “thank you” across the bustling parking lot.
New Seasons stopped distributing the bonus pay, which stood at $150 extra per bi-weekly paycheck for full-time employees and $100 extra per check for part-time employees, on June 30.
Tekiah Elzey, a produce lead at the Concordia store who has been with the company for five years, created an online petition in July with the support of her coworkers demanding the pay be reinstated.
She intended to present the petition supporting worker demands — with nearly 7,000 signatures — to the New Seasons CEO, Forrest Hoffmaster, on Thursday.
But Elzey said Hoffmaster never came to the scheduled company meeting for Concordia store employees.
Teune told Street Roots that the company has extended an increased 30% staff discount — an original demand from the petition — through the end of 2020, and that supplemental paid time off will continue to be offered for staff suffering from COVID-19 symptoms, who must quarantine, or who are caring for a family member who has tested positive for the virus.
But for staff members like Elzey, those benefits aren’t quite enough to ease the mental and physical toll of being an essential grocery store employee in the midst of the worst global health crisis in a century. And even with a discount, she said she will still have to risk exposure to the virus at other store chains with lower prices to be able to afford her groceries.
“New Seasons is really expensive, I can’t buy all my groceries here. I can buy some here, but it’s not enough for me to do my entire grocery shopping here,” she said.
She and her coworkers, she told Street Roots, continue to live in fear of contracting the virus. She wonders if the company could, at least, offer an extra day of paid-time off or revise its attendance policy.
“Right now, it doesn’t feel like there is any support,” Elzey said. “My concerns — a lot of it has to do with customers and how they treat workers. It’s a big one. I work out on the floor so I don’t have, like, a barrier of a counter or anything.”
Workers are also asking New Seasons to consider further limiting the number of customers allowed in stores at a time.
“We are continuing to monitor customer capacity in our stores, and each store has a specific customer capacity number,” Teune stated.
They said that when certain parts of the store, like the produce section, get too crowded, the manager and greeter on duty will pause allowing new customers into the store until “customer flow improves.”
Elzey’s encountered customers who don’t seem concerned with maintaining 6 feet of distance, who have pulled their masks down before asking questions, and some who have gotten close enough to touch her or who say “excuse me” only after getting close enough to spread respiratory droplets.
“It’s kind of a feeling of lack of respect from people, where at the beginning of the pandemic, people were just like, ‘Oh my God, thank you for working, thank you for being here,’ and very respectful of our space. It’s just gotten to the point where people are just like, ‘whatever’ about it now,” she added.
Nine people at six different New Seasons stores have tested positive for COVID-19 since April, according to the grocery chain’s website. New Seasons stated that at both the Concordia and Seven Corner stores, where multiple staff members have contracted the virus this summer, the cases were determined to be unrelated after what New Seasons described as “a thorough contact tracing investigation” in line with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
“In each instance, we contacted local health authorities and followed recommended cleaning guidance,” states the chain’s website. “We work diligently to confirm to the best of our ability that any staff member affected had limited contact with customers, vendors or partners. All receive full pay during their recovery time at home.”
Emart, a South Korean company, bought the New Seasons brand late last year. New Seasons operates in Oregon, Northern California and Washington.
Currently, Elzey is clocking in 36 hours each week. She said in the early days of the pandemic, store sales were particularly high, which likely helped bolster the distribution of the bonus pay.
“If it was called hazard pay, they would have to keep giving it to us,” she said.
The rally outside the Concordia New Seasons store is part of a recent wave of organizing among employees of some of Portland’s biggest local grocers. In early July, local Whole Foods workers staged a walkout demanding better safety protocols during the pandemic, and to be able to wear buttons, pins and flares in support of Black lives that were not issued directly by the company.
REPORT: Whole Foods worker sent home for wearing unauthorized pin in support of Black lives
On July 31, Green Zebra Grocery employees staged a walkout at the Kenton location with a list of demands, including the extension of a $2 per hour bonus of hazard pay during the pandemic, more paid time off and for the attendance policy to be adjusted for the duration of the pandemic. Last week, the CEO of the company announced that two of the chain’s locations would close.
Sarah Kowaleski, coalition organizer at Portland Jobs with Justice who was in attendance at the Concordia store rally Thursday, said the labor organizing hub has been busy supporting grocery store workers. Workers, she said, are turning to grassroots organizing to vie for better safety and payment during the pandemic.
The measures that do exist, she said, are too little too late at times. Kowaleski noted the April death of a Whole Foods employee from COVID-19.
“These protocols, they weren’t preemptive. They were created after essential grocery workers, and the people keeping us fed, had been impacted,” she said. “And people were starting to get sick. It comes down to lack of a voice in the workplace.”
She added that the pandemic has spurred an intense focus on workplace organizing.
“There’s a massive surge of workers, especially in essential sectors organizing,” she said. “They are trying to hold their companies and their management accountable to their stated values. If they’re going to be essential workers, they should be highly valued in society.”
Email Street Roots Staff Reporter Jessica Pollard at jessica@streetroots.org. Follow @JessicaJPollard on Twitter.
Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. It is an award-winning, weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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