An employee at a Kroger distribution center in Memphis, Tenn., has tested positive for the CCP virus, the company announced Thursday.
"The safety of our associates and customers is our top priority," the Kroger management statement continued. "The distribution center has been thoroughly deep cleaned and sanitized. We are supporting the individual, following guidelines from local officials, and are taking extreme measures to ensure the safety of all employees at our site.”
After the news broke, some of the 400 Kroger workers at the distribution center in Memphis stopped working.
"Half the workers have gone home," he added. "They scared for their safety. The ones that is here, they so tense they scared to touch the equipment," he said.
The other half of the 400 workers that fulfill orders for about 100 stores across the mid-South are working seven days a week, doing 16-hour shifts in some cases. Yet apart from thorough cleaning, Kroger has allegedly not provided any additional safety measures for its personnel.
"They only care about us getting cases out," Wiggins said, "not our health and safety." He complained that the company has not agreed a hazard-pay, unlike other major grocers like Meijer and SaveMart.
"I've got guys calling me, texting, saying they want hazard pay, saying, 'I want something if I'm risking my life,'" Barry Brown, a former Kroger warehouse worker and trade union representative for Teamsters Local 667 said. "These guys up in there very upset. For what they're doing, what they're providing for the mid-South."
"They didn’t walk out," Brown said of the workers. "But they trying to figure out, you know, 'cause we already been asking them, 'What are y’all doing to protect us? To protect us from everything, cleaning-wise?'"