Workers in grocery stores have been deemed essential during this public health crisis. We understand the importance of the work we do every day in ensuring that food and essential supplies are made available to people. Unlike many of our colleagues in the grocery and retail drug industry we are lucky that we have a union who has our back, but in this time that isn’t enough to secure the health and safety of my colleagues and our customers. Last month the grocery industry reported a 73% increase in revenues because restaurants and other food stores are closed. We need to make certain that pursuit of profits are not at the expense of worker and customer safety and that is why we are asking that the county board of supervisors instruct the public health department to take the following actions.

1. Require store observers to monitor the actions of customers in maintaining physical spacing within the store.
2. Require no more than 1 customer per 500 square feet of retail sales floor space and assign an employee to count customers to maintain the ratio.
3. Require employers to provide proper facial masks to employees to prevent the potential exposure to the coronavirus.
4. If an employee has been identified through testing as having the coronavirus and may have exposed others at work the store should be closed for at least a 12 hour period to perform a thorough cleaning and disinfecting; the employees potentially exposed be instructed to self-quarantine and tested at the company’s expense; and be paid up to two weeks by the company or until a test comes back negative, whichever is sooner.

Thank you for looking out for the health and safety of our members and our customers. We will get through this together.