Front Burner - COVID-19’s other frontline workers: grocery store staff

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

Even as most businesses in Canada have shut their doors, grocery stores remain open. And workers in those stores – who are often in low-wage positions – are worried about their own safety as COVID-19 continues to spread. Today on Front Burner, CBC reporter Haydn Watters talks to guest host Michelle Shephard about how grocery store staff are coping with the crisis, and what their companies are aiming to do about it

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Michelle Shepard, filling in for Jamie Poisson. When we talk about people on the front lines of the COVID-19 response, we're usually talking about doctors, nurses, first responders, maybe health care workers in retirement homes.

And they are on the front lines. There's no doubt about that. But there's another group of people putting themselves in risky situations to make sure Canadians have what they need during this crisis. Grocery store workers. Many of them need those jobs as much as the rest of us need them to be there. But some are starting to worry that their work

could be putting them in danger. I'm terrified because the very nature of my job goes against government regulations. It just doesn't seem realistic. It just doesn't make sense. We're worried about spreading a virus, and yet everybody's congregating at the grocery store. I've seen the posts on Facebook and Twitter that say, you know, grocery store workers didn't know they signed up for the draft. And that's kind of what it feels like. So today, I'm talking to Hayden Waters. You know, grocery store workers didn't know they signed up for the draft. And that's kind of what it feels like.

So today, I'm talking to Hayden Waters. He's a reporter and producer for Ontario's smaller CBC stations. And he's been looking into this issue. This is FrontBurner. Hi, Hayden. Thanks so much for speaking with me today. Thanks for having me. You know, just last night, I was talking with friends about how to be safe shopping, and it's hard to know what to do. I mean, the other day I wore gloves in the store, but then when we come home, do I wipe

down the products? I can't imagine what it's like for those who are actually working in the grocery stores. What have you been hearing from them about how they're feeling? Yeah, I've been talking to a bunch of these people who are working in the stores over the last week and a half or so. And it's this kind of uneasy feeling like you were just saying, too, like you don't know whether am I safe to go into work or am I should I call in sick? They obviously know that they're playing some sort of important role here. But it's this uneasy feeling. On one hand, I want to stay home and, you know, protect myself and my family. But I also,

on the other hand, want to make sure that other people are fed, that other people, you know, aren't worried about where they're going to get food and stuff like that. I talked to a grocery store worker in Kitchener who we agreed not to identify because she is worried that she is going to lose her job. But she said it's been kind of hectic and chaotic. She's seen fights break out in the grocery store. Most of the fights happen over like essential items. So bread, eggs, milk, toilet paper, paper towels, canned peaches. Canned peaches are a big one, too. People are like all about the peaches right now. The craziest fight I've ever seen though is over tuna. Two guys got in an

almost fistfight over a case of tuna. And that's something that they've never really seen before in the stores. Obviously the stores have also been very busy and crowded and people are starting to get worried and stock up. And this has left some people, I think, a little bit worried that are working in these stores for how they, I mean, how they deal with this. There's that feeling of confliction, I guess. If we're at the front line of a pandemic, which is what it basically is, I mean, hopefully we'll be compensated for it. And it also feels like we're on the front line because they are fighting. Well, and I want to get back to this idea of people fighting the stores. It seems it seems crazy. Before we get there, though, I just want to have you explain what it is that they're worried about from being exposed to the virus.

Is it is about the people they're in contact with? Is it about the merchandise and what's on the shelves? Indeed, I think at Toronto Grocer, someone that works as a cashier at a Toronto grocery store, I think she put it best someone that works as a cashier at a Toronto grocery store, I think she put it best. She ran through with me basically every single thing that people are touching when they walk into a grocery store. One person stays at the front of the store where all the carts and the baskets are, the things that people are constantly touching, and they will constantly sanitize them. They're then going through and touching all the different food as they go in. You're picking up an orange. You don't want that orange. You put it back on the shelf. And many people are doing that and all the different other

items in the grocery store. And so she ran me through all of that until we got to the checkout where she works as a cashier. I'm frequently sanitizing the debit machines where people are constantly touching the pin pad. So I'm constantly thinking about how I'm coming sanitizing the debit machines where people are constantly touching the pin pad. So I'm constantly thinking about how I'm coming into contact with people. So everyone's being exposed to that when they're coming into the store. But I mean, they're staying in that store for eight hours at a time. So they are exposed to hundreds, if not thousands of people that are coming through the store during this time period. I worry about the fact that I may be an asymptomatic carrier.

Who knows? No one really knows right now. There's so much that we still don't know about the virus. So my biggest fear is that my very presence in the store could possibly be a danger to someone else, especially our vulnerable elderly customers. Hayden, I understand you've also spoken to others who feel pressure to go into work when they don't really want to. Yes, there is a woman in Sudbury who's a cashier named Tammy Cardinal and she was going into work but she said, I mean,

it's just so chaotic and she was so worried and stressed and feeling unsafe that she didn't really want to go to work. Well, people became, I guess, panicked. And they started coming in and buying groceries by the cart full, sometimes two carts full. Thinking of nine, ten caches, all of them open, and then lineups all the way from that cache to the end of the store. And then going around the corner. It was just watching the apocalypse and then just looking at the empty, empty meat rows of nothing.

So she actually called her supervisor and told them that she wasn't going to be coming in this week, but she needs a job to pay her rent. So she knows she has to go back to do that job. I need to live too. There's a lot of us in that situation. We can't, you know, we need our paychecks. That's the kind of feeling that I'm getting from a lot of grocery store workers. A lot of them don't necessarily want to be there,

but they know that they have an important role to do. They know that they have to be there to make sure that people are getting fed still through this. Because, yes, they are an essential service, whether the government says so or not. Why do we have to deal with that? Let the military go work the cash, maybe. Or somebody who's better protected right now. I don't know. Or start taking, like, the precautions you would when people are going in and out of a hospital or something. Because we need protection, too.

You know? Who's going to work our crappy jobs if we're all sick? What are the grocery stores doing to make sure the surfaces are clean? I know that some new research has found that the coronavirus can live for up to three days on some of the surfaces. Yeah, it's kind of wild. And if you think of all the surfaces that need to be cleaned in a grocery store, it's even a little bit wilder, right? So I know that there's way more cleaning being done in grocery stores.

They're kind of closing or shortening their hours so they can bring in more cleaning crews overnight and make sure the entire store is sanitized. They are doing things like wearing gloves. They're putting up plexiglass in the cashier lines. They're also, I guess, putting markings on floors to actually show what two meters looks like. So what that kind of distance looks like while you're waiting in those lines in the grocery store waiting to check out.

Okay. Let's go back to that woman that you mentioned who works in the grocery store in Kitchener. I know, as you said, that CBC has agreed to protect her identity because she's worried about losing her job if she speaks out. What's the dilemma that she's facing in particular when she goes into work? Well, it's not just her going. It's also her brother works at a grocery store as well. So it's the two of them. And they have parents who are in that kind of vulnerable, have underlying conditions and are kind of more vulnerable than other sorts of people when it comes to COVID-19 and getting sick. I'm quite worried about it sometimes because

I'm immune compromised. Like I have asthma and my mom's severely immunocompromised. She just had a surgery. So she is worried about not only for herself getting sick, but bringing that back home to her parents and making them sick as well. And this woman, was she the one that said she's witnessed these fights between customers? Yes, indeed. She was the one that had witnessed fights. She said to me that we see fights in parking lots, but it's not like fights are often happening inside the store. So it's not like anyone has bystander training to go up into the store and say, hey, what are you doing? Can we break this up?

And then other times it's more like yelling matches. And then whoever has the higher voice and is more aggressive usually gets the item. I mean, by the time my coworkers and I get to the aisle, it's usually been settled. But I've seen it way too many times already. What? Can this have to just stand there? And it's on top of all the stress by all those people in the store already that you're dealing with fights, too. It seems kind of wild and not necessarily something that she signed up for. No, exactly. When you take a job at Loblaws, you don't think you need some sort of combat training there.

No, no. Or some sort of training on how to diffuse a fight. What is it that they're actually fighting over? That supplies are getting quite low in some of these stores, right? If you've gone into the grocery store the last, I guess, few days, last week and a half now, you've seen some of the shelves empty. We've heard a lot about toilet paper. So they might be fighting if there's only one thing left of that.

Or some grocery stores have placed limits on things. We've had to put like a severe limit on eggs because people were fighting over them and then they drop and then they wasted a product. So if people are taking more than they need or multiple amounts, they'll be fighting over other types of amounts of it. So if I'm taking, let's say two cans of tuna, someone's fighting for the other one, right? Which I hadn't heard someone fighting over a can of tuna before I heard from this woman in Kitchener. Tuna is a big one. Like, I don't even, I couldn't imagine myself fighting over tuna.

Right. And we're talking about this one Kitchener's store. But of course, these are incidents that are happening right across Canada. Have you heard of other cases like this? Of course, there are some anecdotes from across the country, but there's also the example that happened in Toronto. Someone actually pulled a gun at a Lobla store for someone staring at them. And the other shopper said he wasn't staring at him. The guy said he was. Then the other guy took out his cell phone.

That happened, I believe, last week when these kind of more extreme measures were coming into place and people were sort of starting to panic a little bit more. So there's that instance as well. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. So what are the stores doing that is trying to make their lives a little safer for the staff, but also for shoppers there? They are limiting in some of the busier stores and in stores in general, how many people are actually allowed in those stores.

So if you go to a grocery store in a busy area, you may notice a lineup out front of that store. That's because they're limiting how many people are actually allowed in the store at a given time. are actually allowed in the store at a given time. You're also going to start to see, if you haven't already seen it yet, plexiglass rolling out for cashiers in these areas when you're going through the checkout, less one-on-one interaction. I've heard from grocery stores that are actually closing their or have closed their in-store dining areas. The deli meat's already prepared before you go in and wearing gloves too. Basically everyone I spoke to now says they are wearing gloves while they're working at grocery stores. And I understand the stores are offering a little more money as well.

I mean, a lot of these are very tough minimum wage jobs. It was like Thanksgiving every day. It's like Christmas every day. That's how people were shopping. So sure, the big companies making money, but what about the people that are putting themselves at risk? We're not making anything and then we're putting ourselves at risk. Was it Loblaws and Sobeys are both bumping up pay for these workers now? So Sobeys, Loblaw, Metro, the three of them

have kind of similar programs as one another. Basically the two extra dollars an hour, Sobeys goes on top of that where every employee gets $50 a week extra, and you only get that two extra dollars an hour if you're working 20 plus hours a week at the store. It's also worth noting that most of these large grocery chains are actually hiring people. They're in desperate need to keep up with the demand. And the other big question that I have is what happens if one of these grocery workers gets sick, right? I mean, do you close down the entire store and then send home all the employees to self-isolate and just risk not having a grocery store? If this happens in a small community that only has one grocery store, that's devastating

because where do those people get their food, right? When you ask the stores about that, do they give you any answer? What do you suspect is happening? Well, actually, we weren't able to get an answer in the first place. But Galen Weston, who's the head of LawBlog, came out and said, hey, we actually had our first confirmed case in a store. That's the Rio Canadian Superstore in Oshawa, Ontario on Gibbs Street. So they say they're looking after him. But what they're doing right now is actually kind of identifying how it works in the future. If other cases come up, they're going to close down the store immediately when they say a colleague test positive and they're going to remain at close for as long as it takes a deep clean or on the advice of public health. In this particular case in Oshawa, though, the store is actually already back open and

operating on their Facebook page. They say public health in that area has given the go-ahead to keep the store going. A lot of customers are obviously commenting on their Facebook page, kind of questioning if that's the right decision or not. But they're adamant throughout comments on this that this is the advice they're taking from public health and the store is safe to be open for the time being. Now, the UFCW, they're talking about possibly making some of these workers essential workers. Is that right? Is that out in Manitoba that they're doing that? Yes. In Manitoba, there's a conversation going right now. United Food and Commercial Workers,

the union that oversees a lot of these grocery store employees, they sent a letter to Premier Brian Pallister and said, hey, you have declared healthcare workers, these essential workers, frontline workers. We're hoping to get the same distinction for grocery store workers. We're saying, hey, we are frontline. Our members are frontline workers, similar to the health care workers. So that would open up ensuring them have the proper gear, proper gloves, proper kind of sanitary equipment while they're doing their jobs, but also options there for accessible child care for these employees who are working in grocery stores and may not have somewhere to send their kids. I guess all of the provincially run and most of the private run have been closed down. A lot of our members are having to balance between nobody to watch their kids with no school and no child care and being asked to come to work because they're on the front

lines. We've seen the same thing going on right now in several states in the United States. It's Michigan, Minnesota, and it is Vermont who we've seen them declare their grocery store workers, their essential workers. And the kind of movement here in Canada appears to be starting in Manitoba. But I know the UFCW said these discussions are happening in all sorts of different provinces across the country. And I know Hayden, you're camping out at your parents place right now in small town, Allura, Ontario. I'm camped out at home in Toronto. So I've seen what it looks like in the

big city. How are the smaller towns dealing with it like Allura? And how is that different from perhaps what's happening elsewhere? Yeah, we don't actually have a larger chain grocery store here. The one that was here closed down a few years ago now. So it's more independent grocery store employees or grocery stores in the town here. And they're kind of struggling with it at the moment. I know they have to limit the amount of people in their stores way more extreme than big box grocery stores would do because they're in way smaller spaces, more confined spaces. So I read a post from one of the grocery store or small grocery stores here, kind of a healthy grocery store. And they said they kind of felt like the police kind of policing who was

allowed into the store and how often they were allowed to come into the store, how many people were allowed in the store. So it is quite a struggle because, yes, everyone in town needs to get fed, but you can only allow so many people in at a certain time. And there's also concerns about how they get that food to them, right? Because in larger cities, I mean, delivery is a thing or you can get food in many different ways. But in smaller towns, that's not necessarily a possibility. Right. And these grocery stores are already, I mean, so understaffed at the moment because they're dealing with so much demand that something like that isn't an option. So I don't know how much longer something like that is sustainable compared to a big box grocery store model where they are able to operate around the crock or have a workforce that's a lot larger than an independent smaller grocer. And you mentioned that idea of delivery and the online shopping and I know that's not possible for the smaller towns but we have heard that

there's been a great increase in that. Just today the Canadian meal kit delivery company Good Food said they're hiring because they have such an increased demand. If people go to that model more and more, what problems can you see that that would, new problems that would come from that? Yeah, I think that, I mean, it's not totally possible. I mean, there's still parts of Ontario, southern Ontario, where internet's not a thing, right? Like, or it's still not accessible, right? And then how do you, if it's so remote, how do you get those groceries out there, right? I don't think that we can fully move to this online model,

definitely not all over the country, maybe in parts of the country you can, but internet still is not accessible in many parts of provinces and the country. So I don't know if that is a realistic idea at the moment. Also, I was talking to that Kitchener, a person that works in a grocery store in Kitchener, she deals with their online section. And she said, simply, if everyone was to move over to online, we only have four fridges in our online department. Each fridge holds about eight to 12 orders,

which is not a lot. Right, so I mean, there's many considerations to kind of take in, but that's also another one too. Where do I store all this food before people come pick it up? What does that look like? Does it even protect me? Because all those people

that are putting your groceries together before you go pick them up or they get delivered are touching your products too, right? So is it better for me to come into the store to get it or is it better for me to someone to deliver it or is it better to have someone assemble it and then just go in and pick it up? This is still so new that we don't know what all the kind of health risks are there when it comes to all those different delivery methods, I guess. Yeah. And even in the large warehouses, we know that it could be a problem. I think it's one worker in Amazon warehouse in the U.S. has now tested positive for COVID-19. And there's fallout to that. An Amazon warehouse in Woodside, Queens. According to the company, the warehouse is being

cleaned. A group of workers called Amazonians United NYC has a petition signed by hundreds of people calling for coronavirus protections. Yes, right. And that's the thing. I mean, if one kind of call gets broken in the system or someone falls sick in the system, it has a chain reaction right on down. We haven't seen that yet, but I worry what that means for small town grocers. If someone gets sick and a grocery store closes in a small town that only has one grocery store, where do those people go and get their groceries, right? Hayden, this has to be tough on a lot of people that are working in grocery stores, but you also mentioned that people are thanking them for the work they're doing now.

That must be a little bit heartening for them. Yes, I mean, this is something that they're not necessarily used to. They don't get people coming up thanking them and saying, thank you for doing what you're doing on a daily basis before this. But everyone I spoke to said, this is what they're getting now. They're getting people that are coming through and thanking them for doing their jobs. You know, I get so many customers who compliment me and say, thank you for doing what you do. And it's really nice to hear. It's just like, it's such a stressful time. I feel like I'm not even really absorbing it sometimes.

And I mean, it makes everything a little bit easier. It's still extremely stressful to work in a grocery store under these situations, obviously. But having someone realize that, yeah, you're under these circumstances, I think has made a lot of them feel a lot better about what they're doing and has helped them go into work every single day. The circumstances are not so great, but it's nice to feel like the public knows we're important. I guess it's just like people are finally pausing and seeing us when I don't think we really get seen in this way on a daily basis. Well, thank you, Hayden, for doing your reporting and for joining us today. Thanks for having me. And before we go, an update from the UK.

On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Britain would be locked down for three weeks. That means everyone must stay in their homes except for trips for food or medicine. All non-essential shops are closed now and meetings of more than two people who do not live together are banned. Police can find anyone who defy the restrictions. I want to thank everyone who is working flat out to beat the virus. Everyone from the supermarket staff to the transport workers to the carers to the nurses and doctors on the front line. But in this fight, we can be in no doubt that each and every one of us is directly enlisted. Johnson has been criticised for not treating the pandemic seriously enough.

His televised address Monday was a stark reversal to his government's earlier approach, which was, in part, to allow the virus to spread naturally in order to build up the population's herd immunity. That's all for today. I'm Michelle Shepherd, filling in for Jamie Poisson.

Thank you for listening.