‘We are forgotten’: Grocery store workers hope for higher wages, vaccines



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HAC, the Oklahoma company that owns Cash Saver and Homeland, is owned by its employees. Its chief executive, Marc Jones, said the hero’s initial pay last year was “a reflection of the huge increase in the number of people in our stores, and when that wave died down it seemed like the time was right. come to end it. It was a huge expense for the company, he said, which has about 80 stores and 3,400 employees and competes with Walmart.

Even with a better year than usual, groceries is a “particularly low-profit” business, Mr. Jones said. Until March, he said, “it was a big question whether the local grocery store would survive even and whether everyone was going to go online.”

Ms Sockwell said she was more concerned about the delayed vaccination of grocery store workers, especially as her colleagues tended to work all possible hours, at minimum wage.

“Most of my staff up front, they barely have a high school diploma,” said Ms Sockwell, whose local UFCW unit tried to convince Oklahoma officials to enroll staff. grocery store on the priority immunization list. “They want to do whatever they can to keep food and electricity in their homes.”

She added, “We are junior workers who don’t need a bachelor’s or master’s degree, but we are still people.”

At least 13 states have made some grocery store workers eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine in at least some counties. These are Alabama, Arizona, California, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and of Wyoming.

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