(AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)
Three months after increasing thank-you pay for its employees, Trader Joe’s will slash the extra pay by half. The pay was temporarily raised by $4 for hourly workers in February. Now $2 is being taken away.
That was quite a bump in hourly wages in February. Hourly workers do not usually see $4 per hour increases in pay. Since the pandemic has entered a new phase with the availability of vaccines for those who want them, the hourly workers will be thanked a little less, apparently. Back in March 2020, Trader Joe’s gave its employees an additional $2 per hour in “thank you” pay for working during the COVID-19 pandemic. That was followed by the additional hourly pay in February. These increases in pay fell in line with some cities that were passing “hazard pay” ordinances for grocery workers. The kicker for Trader Joe’s employees is that the hazard pay ordinances applied to large grocery store chains. Trader Joe’s doesn’t fall into tha
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Trader Joe s increased thank you pay to $4 in February. Now it wants to cut that by half.
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Trader Joe s told its crew members that it plans to reduce its $4 thank you pay by half.Diane Macdonald/Moment Editorial/Getty Images
Just months after Trader Joe’s announced that it would temporarily increase its “thank you” pay to hourly crew members to $4, the grocery chain is purportedly cutting that bonus by half. After only three months, the company announced that on May 1st they will take away our additional two dollars, and we fear the rest of the ‘Thank You Pay’ is soon to follow, the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee wrote on coworker.org. The online petition is asking that the $4 “thank you” pay remain permanent.
KUNC
Bert Cutshall (left, Zoom screenshot), Maricela Guzman (middle, picture by Adam Rayes) and Phillip Tucker (right, courtesy picture) all have been working at King Soopers for years. They all say the pandemic has put them at a difficult crossroads between their health and economic wellbeing.
Updated: March 12, 2021 at 12:46 PM MST
The arbitrator sided with all but one of the workers in March, according to UFCW 7. Safeway declined KUNC s request for comment on the arbitration. King Soopers has yet to respond.
People 65 and older began qualifying for the COVID-19 vaccine on Feb. 8 under the state s phase system. Grocery workers younger than 65 began qualifying in early March.