Posted on 02/02/2021 7:56:47 PM PST by lowbridge
Kroger Co. will close two Southern California supermarkets in response to a local ordinance requiring extra pay for certain grocery employees working during the pandemic.
The decision announced by the company Monday follows a unanimous vote last month by the Long Beach City Council mandating a 120-day increase of $4 an hour for employees of supermarkets with at least 300 employees nationwide and more than 15 in Long Beach.
Kroger said it will close a Ralphs market and a Food 4 Less on April 17, the Press-Telegram reported.
“As a result of the City of Long Beach’s decision to pass an ordinance mandating Extra Pay for grocery workers, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close long-struggling store locations in Long Beach,” the company said in a statement.
The statement added: “This misguided action by the Long Beach City Council oversteps the traditional bargaining process and applies to some, but not all, grocery workers in the city.”
A city statement characterized Kroger’s decision as “unfortunate for workers, shoppers and the company.”
A $5-per-hour hazard pay wage increase was approved Tuesday by the Oakland City Council. In Los Angeles, the City Council voted to draft a similar ordinance.
Last week, Santa Clara County supervisors voted to draft a $5-per-hour measure, which could come up for a vote next week.
The Los Angeles suburb of Montebello previously approved a hazard pay measure and others are being considered in the L.A. suburb of Pomona and in San Jose and other San Francisco Bay Area cities.
Last week, Santa Clara County supervisors voted to draft an ordinance for a $5 hourly raise for some essential workers, including grocery store workers. It could come up for a vote next week.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
Grocers operate on a profit margin of about a penny on the dollar.
Guy. Get out.
Time to start putting up faces of the city council people with recipes on how to eat them and their family. Soylent Socialists!
That's the marginal profit, you are correct. The thing is, they turn over their inventory 5 or 6 times a year, so on an annual basis they are doing better than the marginal rate would indicate.
But, c'mon, man, these people just need to learn to code, then they'll be okay. And the smart-as-a-whip (or so I've heard) Heels Up says they can reclaim all those land mines, so there's that as well.
This isn’t minimum wage. This is outlawing jobs below a certain price.
?
Look at the list of cities that have passed these measures.
I had no idea this was taking place.
Long each won’t be the only place, if this continues.
That’s the problem.
Grocery stores and fast food restaurants in my area are already offering 13 to 15 dollars an hour in order to compete with covid inflated unemployment benefits.
The Judiciary is AWOL.
The entire thing is broken.
As of Jan 6, you’re living in a techno-oligarchy, not a Democratic Republic.
I’m moving to Ecuador.
here is an article framing the pros and cons of hero pay.
From the article:
“According to UFCW, at least 134 grocery workers have died from COVID-19 and 28,700 have been infected or exposed to the virus among its membership nationwide. Across UFCW’s overall 1.3 million members — which covers grocery stores, meatpacking, food processing, retail and other industries — at least 388 frontline workers have died from the disease and over 75,800 have been infected or exposed, the union reported.”
Agreed. This article or another that I read said these were already underperforming stores. At some point, a business has to listen to the mathematics. Politicians don’t care. They expected krogers to siphon money from profitable stores around the country, so the politicians could look caring and compassionate to their voters. That didn’t fly.
MY first job out of high school as at the Kroger Divisional office in Madison , Wis. Learned alot & liked the job very much. Have worked a number of jobs in the over 63 years since, and it still stands as one of the best jobs I ever had. No Complaints.
A single Costco store has more than 134 employees.
They are crying wolf.
I don’t wish anyone to die from this virus, but the UNION certainly isn’t telling us HOW MANY UNION workers are in that calculation, are they???
They were all union members. The union website says they have ~835K grocery store workers. Further looking around, there is around 3M grocery store workers in the US. I wouldn’t think the overall case and death tally ratio would be much different in the larger population of workers. The article didn’t say where the workers came down with Covid. They certainly all didn’t catch it at work. We had 3 workers at a local grocery store come down with Covid, but it was traced back to a wedding..
I would think there would be a huge difference between an office job and a supermarket. No comparison.
You could do worse...Cuenca in Ecuador is a nice city...much more pleasant than Quito.
I lived in Chile for 5-years on a work visa...lots of pluses and minuses; have worked and lived in South America for over 8-years...none of the countries can compete with living in rural Idaho.
Buenos suerte
Do you know much about Salinas, near La Libertad?
No, except Salinas is on the coast and obviously at sea level. I was surprised to learn that Cuenca is 8,000 feet above sea level.
I worked out of offices in the Andes at elevations above 14,000 feet for almost 10-years...not so sure I would want to retire at 8,000.
I spent time in Quito and in the boonies in the SE of the country, near the Peruvian border...east of Loja. Crazy area; lots of gold operations and people well armed.
I think Ecuador has changed a lot since I was there...a lot more stable now, but all these countries are just a step or two away from going Full Monty Commie and the retirement environment could change rapidly. (Sounds a bit like the USA now)
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