“Whole Foods employees are planning to strike on Tuesday to protest the lack of protections offered to workers during the coronavirus pandemic—the first national collective action led by workers at the company since it was founded in 1980.
On March 31, Whole Foods employees will call in sick to demand paid leave for all workers who stay home or self-quarantine during the crisis, free coronavirus testing for all employees, and hazard pay of double the current hourly wage for employees who show up to work during the pandemic.
In recent weeks, Whole Foods—a subsidiary of Amazon— has increased hourly pay for its workers by $2 an hour, offered to provide two weeks of paid sick leave to workers who test positive for Covid-19, and said it would not penalize workers for calling out sick.
“The most obvious demand we have is for an increase in hazard pay. We’re asking for double pay,” a Whole Foods worker in Chicago and organizer of the “sick-out” who wished to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation, told Motherboard. “Since we first announced the intent to do a sick out, Whole Foods announced a temporary raise of $2 an hour, which isn’t enough. A bunch of us have already gotten sick. It’s very plausible that some of us will die for this job.”
Read the full piece here, please share, and RESPECT THE STRIKE.
Whole Foods is owned by Amazon which is owned by the richest man on Earth. They were asking employees to donate their sick days to other employees, literal wage theft under the guise of “we’re all a family.”
Also: Instacart workers are on strike starting today, March 30th.
Animal shelters across the country have had to close their doors as part of the effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Fearing the arrival of new litters and abandoned animals with no one to adopt them, they are racing to empty kennels before they are forced to resort to euthanasia.
“Every industry in the world right now is going through a massive disruption, and animal sheltering and animal rescues are no exception to that,” says Julie Castle, the chief executive officer of Best Friends Animal Society, an advocacy group that works with more than 3,000 shelters.
Many of these shelters have moved into crisis mode.
