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8.A. - Page 28 of 73 <br />Tne #Uasnzngton Aust <br />Democracy Dies in Darkness <br />Grocery workers say morale is at an all-time low: <br />`They don't even treat us like humans anymore' <br />Hailed as "heroes" at the onset of the pandemic, supermarket employees now say they are overworked, <br />overwhelmed and feeling expendable again. <br />By Abha Bhattarai <br />August 12, 2020 at 4:00 a.m. PDT <br />This spring, for the first time, Angel Manners found purpose and pride at the supermarket where she has worked the <br />past decade. Customers praised her as a hero for putting herself at risk during the pandemic. Bosses boosted her <br />hourly pay by $2. Suddenly, her job was essential. <br />Nearly five months in, and it is all gone. <br />"We've lost our hazard pay, and people are quitting every day," said Manners, 43, who processes vendor deliveries at a <br />Meijer store in northern Kentucky. "Those of us who are left are really stretched thin — working so much harder for <br />$11.5o an hour." <br />Grocery workers across the country say morale is crushingly low as the pandemic wears on with no end in sight. <br />Overwhelmed employees are quitting mid -shift. Those who remain say they are overworked, taking on extra hours, <br />enforcing mask requirements and dealing with hostile customers. Most retailers have done away with hazard pay even <br />as workers remain vulnerable to infection, or worse. Employees who took sick leave at the beginning of the pandemic <br />say they cannot afford to take unpaid time off now, even if they feel unwell. <br />The mounting despair is heightened by the lack of other job options: Supermarkets are among the few bright spots in <br />an industry that has been ravaged by covid-related store closures and a sharp drop-off in consumer spending. The <br />retail sector has shed 913,000 jobs and chalked up more than a dozen bankruptcies during the pandemic. <br />"At the beginning they valorized what was deemed a dead-end job, but four months later they don't even treat us like <br />humans anymore," said Fox Wingate, 24, who works at a Safeway in Maryland. <br />Workers' renewed sense of expendability comes after four straight months of double-digit unemployment. With as <br />many as 30 million Americans collecting unemployment benefits, labor experts and economists say there is an over- <br />growing pool of desperate people willing to face hazardous conditions and low pay to put food on the table. The <br />nation's 2.7 million grocery workers make, on average, $13.2o an hour, or about $27,000 a year, Commerce <br />Department data shows. <br />"These are jobs that already don't pay enough for people to support themselves and their families," said Janice Fine, a <br />professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. "Now with a recession and unemployment being so high, it means that <br />employers have even more of an upper hand — especially in an industry where a disproportionate number of worAW <br />