Creator Forum - Racial Loyalty News Online

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to mandate the pay bump for publicly traded grocery store or retail drug companies, or companies that have at least 300 employees nationwide and more than 10 employees per store site. The measure applies only to unincorporated areas, benefiting about 2,500 hourly grocery store workers. "These workers ... have put their lives on the line since the beginning of the pandemic to keep our food supply chain running ... "I  would hate to think we're driving [out of business] the very businesses  we fought so hard to locate in unincorporated areas, many of which are  working class neighborhoods ... and that's why I can't vote for this,"  said Barger, the only Republican on the board.  Since January,  several cities, including Santa Monica, San Jose, Berkeley and West  Hollywood, have considered or passed some level of hazard pay mandates.  "We're going to be forced to sue [the  county] if it passes, and that's just unfortunate because it means we  will comply obviously with an ordinance that has been passed legally ... said Ron Fong, president and chief executive at the California Grocers Assn., which represents more than 300 retailers operating more than 6,000 stores...


                                                                                               
     

Kroger and Albertsons saw big boosts in early 2020, the report found. Still, the "companies did not earn above-average profits until the first quarter of 2020 during the COVID-19 shopping spike and by the third quarter had dropped below the average," ... Retailers will probably try to absorb the costs because they have to remain competitive, but they could close underperforming stores, which could  include locations in smaller suburbs, low-income neighbors with high  numbers of dollar stores, and in rural areas, said Neil Saunders... higher labor and transportation costs  make the service not profitable. "If you keep messing around with pay, the grocers will start to say  'OK, let's see where we can cut labor out,'" Saunders said, adding that Kroger has starting testing stores that do not have registers and instead are self-service only. Some worry about how a patchwork of "hero pay" mandates sprouting up across L.A. County.



How much effect could a hazard pay mandate really have if only lasts a few months?  In the last year, far more  families are eating at home and thus spending significantly more money  on their grocery bills, Flickinger said. Grocery  sales "will drop significantly, and with sales dropping significantly,  the operating profit per store per property will drop significantly as  well," he said. This could lead some retailers to close underperforming stores to make up for the cost of "hero pay."