Council requires these ‘essential’ workers get pandemic hazard pay in Bellingham
Bellingham City Council has approved a measure that requires businesses give hazard pay of $4 per hour to workers at grocery stores with more than 40 employees.
The measure passed on a 5-2 vote Monday, April 26, with council members Gene Knutson and Pinky Vargas dissenting.
“We’re very grateful that the council recognized what the front-line workers, what grocery workers have been doing over the past year,” said Marc Auerbach of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union 21.
“It’s very gratifying to see the community — and I consider the City Council the community — step forward,” Auerbach told The Bellingham Herald in an interview on Tuesday, April 27.
UFCW 21 represents about 1,200 workers at Fred Meyer, Safeway and Haggen supermarkets in Bellingham, he said.
Amanda Dalton, president of the Northwest Grocery Association, a trade group, told The Herald that its member stores are compensating employees who get a COVID-19 vaccine and are providing sick leave for those who suffer adverse reactions.
“It is unfortunate that the council ignored the data that grocery stores continue to be one of the employers with the lowest transmission rates in the state; that one year into the pandemic is not the time to enact hazard pay ordinances; and completely ignored community retailers that have provided an average of $2 per hour in temporary additional wage in the beginning of the pandemic, offered additional hours to current employees before hiring new employees, and offered scheduling changes due to child care challenges,” Dalton said in an email.
Bellingham’s proposed ordinance is similar to those enacted in Seattle, Burien, Bainbridge Island, and King County, according to the text of the ordinance.
Seattle’s ordinance was affirmed by a federal court, said Alan Marriner, city attorney.
But the local measure is without enforcement power, because Bellingham, unlike larger cities such as Seattle, has no enforcement division, Marriner told the council during an online committee session April 12.
“The only remedy for an employee that does not receive their hazard pay or is retaliated against is to file a civil action in court,” he said.
Council member Lisa Anderson, who proposed the measure, said there’s lots of uncertainty about the pandemic, even though vaccines are available to everyone over 16.
“I think these workers are essential and it has been mentioned multiple times their wage is not reflective of the risk,” Anderson said at the meeting.
“Baristas, and waiters and cooks — they’re front line too. Their employers are able to mitigate the exposure, whether it’s take-out or drive-up window. Neither are they seeing thousands of people,” she said.
Knutson, who said he has been working in person through the pandemic, said he feared higher food prices or a supermarket closure.
“I just feel we’re going down a road we shouldn’t be going down,” he said.
Auerbach and other union members — as well as a representative of the trade group — addressed the hazard pay measure during an online public hearing Monday night.
“This has been a year of danger and stress for workers and record profits for grocery corporations,” Auerbach told the council.
“For more than a year, our members have been showing up every day and doing exactly what experts are telling us not to do: Spending their whole day, indoors, interacting with hundreds or thousands of strangers,” he said.
Stay-home orders to curb the spread of the new coronavirus pandemic drove a 39% rise in profits at major supermarket chains, according to news reports and a report by the Brookings Institution.
Supermarket employees were considered essential workers and stores remained open throughout the pandemic.
“The same mandates that enriched these companies effectively drafted front-line grocery workers into essential work keeping our communities safe at significant physical and psychological risk to themselves and their families,” Auerbach said.
Other speakers told how they’ve been forced to stop working because of a loved one who is at risk for COVID-19 and the stress of having to work around customers who refuse mask mandates and without protective equipment for themselves.
“I feel very fortunate to be able to stay home, but I have many friends and family who do not have that choice,” said grocery worker Theresa Lincoln.
“Every day, they have to worry about COVID. They have to worry about customers who refuse to wear a mask and are sometimes looking for a fight. This is not the job any of us signed up for and we certainly don’t get paid enough for the risk and the stress,” she told the council.
