As they brace for the holiday rush, grocery store and other frontline workers are demanding hazard pay, better cleaning of their workplaces and the mandatory wearing of masks to improve safety amid the spike in coronavirus cases across the country.
Leaders and members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents more than 1 million food, retail and meatpacking plant workers, said Monday that many major employers have grown lax, cutting wages and protections put in place when the coronavirus first began to spread in the spring.
“We’re entering what could prove to be the riskiest and deadliest phase of this pandemic for million of essential frontline workers,’’ says Marc Perrone, UCFW International's president, adding that as the holidays begin, grocery stores are in the midst of their busiest five-week period of the year. "The fear that they feel is as great if not greater than it was in the early days of this ....pandemic."
Perrone says that at least 350 of his union's members have died from COVID-19 including 109 grocery store employees, and more than 48,000 members have become ill or been exposed to the virus. 
"Unless we take immediate actions beginning this holiday week, many more essential workers will become sick and more tragically may die,’’ Perrone says.
Perrone says most major retailers stopped offering hazard pay in June, and he called out Amazon, Kroger, and Walmart in particular for not paying that additional compensation while they see their profits soar.
In addition to restoring hazard pay and providing paid sick leave, the union is calling on food retail executives to provide free coronavirus testing and protective equipment to all workers, and to enforce the wearing of masks among customers as well as employees,  among other demands.