Coronavirus: Retail workers 'scared' as cases surge - BBC News

Labour activists in the US say big retailers like Amazon and Walmart must do more to protect workers as surging coronavirus cases coincide with the holiday shopping rush.

"Associates like me are scared," said Walmart worker Melissa Love.

The workers rights campaign launched on Monday was organised by United for Respect, a workers rights non-profit that says it represents more than 16 million people across the US.

Separately, the labour union UFCW, whose members include grocery and meatpacking plant workers, also called on employers to do more to protect staff.

"Simply put, frontline workers are terrified because their employers and our elected leaders are not doing enough to protect them and stop the spread of this virus," UFCW International President Marc Perrone said.

Ms Love, a member of United for Respect who has worked at Walmart for five years, said on a call organised for reporters that she feared a rush of holiday shoppers could turn Walmart into a "super-spreader" hub.

Courtenay Brown, another member of the group, who picks groceries for Amazon, said the company has had to send out repeated notifications in recent days about infected staff.

She said she's happy to have a job, but to Amazon "my life doesn't really mean much - it's just a means for Bezos to continue making billions off of us".

Workers said the companies had the means to spend more to protect and compensate workers, noting the way profits have soared during the pandemic, which has shifted purchases to essentials and kept many smaller competitors closed.

"All in, we've introduced or changed over 150 processes to ensure the health and safety of our teams, including distributing over 100 million face masks, implementing temperature checks at sites around the world, mandating enhanced cleaning procedures at all of our sites, and introducing extensive social distancing measures to reduce the risk for our employees," the company said.

A recent analysis by the Brookings Institute, a Washington think tank, found that company profits at 13 of America's biggest retailers increased by an average of 39% this year, while pay for frontline workers had increased by just $1.11 per hour - "a 10% increase on top of wages that are often too low to meet a family's basic needs".

Workers said they are well aware of the disparity.