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- Kroger is closing 3 stores in LA after a new law mandated an extra $5 an hour for essential workers.
- Kroger also closed stores in Seattle and Long Beach, California, following hazard pay laws.
- Across the US, 134 grocery store workers have died and 28,700 have been infected due to COVID-19.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Kroger is closing three stores in Los Angeles after the Los Angeles City Council voted in favor of a hazard pay law that mandates large corporations to pay an extra $5 per hour to frontline essential workers.
The store closures – one Ralphs and two Food 4 Less locations – will eliminate the jobs of 250 employees, CNN first reported. The company will work to reassign within the company the employees affected by the store closures.
This isn't the first time Kroger has closed stores after being required to pay essential workers hazard pay. Last month, Kroger closed two QFC stores in Seattle after the city implemented a hazard pay law requiring $4 extra per hour for essential workers, Insider reported. Kroger also closed stores in Long Beach, California, following mandates for hazard pay in February.
"City officials need to consider that grocery stores- in a pandemic- operate on razor-thin profit margins," Kroger said when the Seattle stores closed in a statement to Insider. "The mandated extra pay makes it impossible to continue operating underperforming stores." Kroger will work to relocate employees to other positions within the company.
Critics have taken aim at Kroger's profits as the country's largest grocery chain continues to cut jobs during a pandemic.
"This company took in $2.6 billion in profits last year alone. Some people won in the pandemic, most lost. Kroger clearly won and now faced with sharing their windfall with their employees they chose instead to destroy 250 families' lives in the middle of a pandemic," said John Grant, the president of the union representing grocery and drug store workers.
"This is not about hazard pay. This is about communities standing up to big corporations as they profit off thousands of infections and death," Grant added.
"This is not a business decision. This is greed, pure and simple. This is Kroger sending a message to their employees that asking for their fair share won't just cost them their jobs, but their community's access to food as well," said Michelle Seyler, the executive director of Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice. "We are still in the middle of a global pandemic, and we should be caring for those who care for us, not taking away people's livelihoods."
In the US, 134 grocery store workers have died due to COVID-19, and 28,700 grocery store workers have been infected or exposed to the coronavirus, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.
Kroger isn't the only company to come under scrutiny for the lack of hazard pay to essential workers. Amazon-owned Whole Foods stopped paying its workers an extra $2 per hour in June. Employees called on the chain to reinstate the hazard bonus.