Publication
Overall, the pandemic economy has not been kind to women, particularly women of color. Since March 2020, women have lost 5.4 million net jobs, nearly 1 million more than men. Service industries that tend to have higher concentrations of women workers, including women of color, were the hardest hit by the virus. Pre-pandemic, those jobs often paid less and offered fewer benefits—like health care or paid leave—that might have helped women better weather this particular crisis. Frankly, the pre-pandemic economy wasn’t particularly kind to women either, especially women of color and immigrant women who were more likely to work in these industries.
Publication
Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of Americans have ordered groceries online for the first time. By some estimates, as many as 45% of all households—55.5 million—ordered groceries online for delivery or pickup during August. Major grocery chains have seen their total revenue from online orders double or even triple from last year. Some surveys show as much as 25% of U.S. grocery sales were ordered digitally during the widespread lock-down period in May, and still nearly 12% in August. Many customers, understandably nervous about the health implications of leaving their homes and sharing narrow grocery aisles with other shoppers, are exploring new ways of getting food to their homes. This not only has led to the surge in online grocery ordering, but also provided a stimulus to the struggling meal kit industry and expanded home delivery of prepared foods. For elderly customers and those with vulnerable health conditions, the expansion of these new food ordering and delivery channels literally is a lifeline in the context of the pandemic.
The growth of e-commerce sales for food has increased the number of jobs available at a time when unemployment across the U.S. economy has skyrocketed. Grocery workers now are seen as essential workers, even heroes. At times they even have received extra hazard pay. And yet media reports also are full of stories of ongoing low wages and poor working conditions, severe health risks, and employer retaliation against workers who speak out. These challenges are even greater for grocery and delivery workers hired as independent contractors, who have no legal employment protections, unstable earnings and hours, low levels of access to health insurance, challenges obtaining personal protective equipment, and legal and administrative barriers to accessing unemployment insurance should they not be able to work.
What are the broader implications of the recent surge in grocery e-commerce work? Will these jobs continue to expand beyond the pandemic and, if so, by how much? What kinds of wages and working conditions exist in different segments of the industry? What changes should people in more traditional grocery store jobs anticipate? As grocery e-commerce continues to grow, what options exist to improve working conditions for the workers affected by this trend?
Key Takeaways:
- This Labor Day, we are reminded that there are still anti-labor policies on the books in Georgia that diminish worker power and economic opportunity for all.
- Unions play a significant role in shaping a better future for Georgia’s workers, their families and the economy overall.
Why it matters
At the expense of low-wage workers, those who wield more than their fair share of corporate and political power have facilitated and benefited from a historic rise in racial and economic inequality. Policymakers and business interests have collaborated long enough through state and local policies to make Georgia simultaneously the No. 1 place to do business and home of the No. 1 place for income inequality.
The weakening of labor protections in Georgia allowed for policies like Georgia’s Senate Bill (SB) 359 to ram through this legislative session. This bill shields businesses from liability by creating a near-impossible standard to prove gross negligence if a worker contracts COVID-19 on the job. In other words, state lawmakers bolstered protections for employers, but not for the people they employ who were forced to return to work prematurely during a deadly pandemic in a state with one of the highest infection rates, particularly among Black and Latinx Georgians.
Labor unions are a time-tested way for workers to organize and negotiate collectively for higher wages, better benefits, and safer working conditions.
By advocating for better conditions in their own workplaces, unions also set standards for workers throughout the country. While union membership has declined since the 1960s, unions are still key to building a stronger, fairer economy for working Americans.