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8.A. - Page 19 of 21 <br />The gap between pandemic profits and pandemic pay is especially striking at the country's <br />three largest grocery providers: Walmart, Kroger, and Albertsons. Together, the three <br />companies earned an additional $6.8 billion in profit in the first three quarters of 2020 <br />compared to 2019—an average increase of 98%. Meanwhile, the extra hazard pay these <br />companies provided their workers averaged just $0.76 per hour through the end of 2020— <br />well below the average hazard pay of $1.19 per hour across the 13 companies in our <br />analysis, and far less than the $2 per hour hazard pay that Costco continues to provide its <br />frontline workers. Specifically: <br />• Walmart could have quadrupled the amount of hazard pay it gave its frontline <br />workers and still earned more profit than last year. As Walmart's profits and stock <br />price surged during the pandemic, the wealth of the Walton siblings (billionaire heirs <br />to the Walmart fortune) has grown by 26 times the total amount of hazard pay the <br />company paid its more than 1.5 million associates. <br />• Kroger ended its $2 per hour "hero pay" in mid-May, 257 days ago, despite doubling <br />its profits and spending nearly a billion dollars in 2020 to buy back its own stock <br />shares. <br />• Albertsons had the highest profit growth of all the retail companies in our analysis. <br />Their pandemic profits are up a stunning 149% in the first three quarters of 2020 <br />compared to 2019. The company spent nearly $1.9 billion in stock buybacks in the <br />first three quarters of last year, compared to the approximate $350 million, pre-tax, <br />the company spent on hazard pay and expanded sick pay for its workers. <br />These large grocery companies have the means—and the moral imperative—to provide <br />their workers hazard pay. Despite pressure from unions, negative media attention, and <br />even comments from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris calling on <br />CEOs to institute hazard pay, many large grocery and retail companies are still choosing <br />not to invest their pandemic profits back into workers. With the new mandates, however, <br />local governments are signaling that not only should these companies provide hazard pay, <br />but they must. <br />Local governments face trade-offs in including more <br />essential workers in hazard pay mandates <br />