As COVID-19 Surges, Some Trader Joe’s Workers Say They're In A “State Of Terror”

As COVID-19 spikes again in New York City, employees of one of the area’s most popular grocery chains say they are increasingly afraid for their safety.

“All my colleagues have worked, since the pandemic started, in a state of terror,” said Jamie Chosak, who worked at a Trader Joe’s in SoHo from April 2018 until last Friday, when she quit. “All of this is compounded by the fear of talking to each other about the way the company mistreats employees.”

Employees from three Trader Joe’s locations—Murray Hill, SoHo, and the Upper West Side—told Gothamist/WNYC that the stores are no longer adequately cleaned, mask-wearing and social-distancing are not strictly enforced among shoppers, and break rooms are too small and not properly ventilated. A positive COVID-19 case is no longer enough to shutter a store and trigger a deep cleaning, and workers have a hard time figuring out when they’ve come into contact with a colleague who tested positive, the employees said. Often, they are afraid to speak up, wary that management will reprimand them.

"The safety and wellbeing of our Crew Members and customers is, and always will be, top of mind," a spokesperson for Trader Joe's wrote in an email. "Throughout this pandemic, we have prioritized creating a safe working and shopping environment every day, developing and implementing procedures that meet and exceed recommendations from the CDC and health officials."

Since the virus first struck the city in March, killing more than 24,000 residents, grocery store and supermarket employees have been deemed essential workers, operating check-out counters, restocking supplies, and swabbing floors.

There is no exact count of supermarket and grocery store employees who have been infected and died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began, but these workers endure a heightened risk, interacting with hundreds of customers a day in close proximity. At least one Trader Joe’s worker in New York has died from COVID-19. The employee worked at the Scarsdale location in Westchester, and died in early April.

In the early days of the pandemic, before the statewide mask mandate, workers say they were discouraged from wearing face coverings.

“They almost fired someone who insisted on wearing a mask at the beginning, before there was a mask mandate,” recalled an employee at Trader Joe’s popular West 93rd Street and Columbus Avenue location on the Upper West Side.

Before starting a shift, all workers have to complete a wellness check that includes a question about whether they have come into contact with someone who has received a positive test.

One Upper West Side employee said that at least four of their coworkers have tested positive for COVID-19 in the last two weeks.

“It clearly has been circulating within the crew,” said the employee, who asked to withhold their name for fear of reprisal. “If I were in charge, the only morally defensible option would be to shut down the store, get everyone get rapid tested and only let people back who get negative tests.”

Some employees said they want Trader Joe’s, a company owned by one of the wealthiest families in the world, to compensate them for the time they spend going to get tested, or pay to send coronavirus test kits to employees’ homes, as Apple has done.

“I’m just concerned I’m gonna go to work and get infected and this is a job I have to do to keep my health insurance,” said another employee of the Upper West Side store. “I just can’t take time off.”

A worker recently tested positive at Trader Joe’s Murray Hill location, according to one employee there, prompting demands for a temporary store closure. Rank-and-file employees were rebuffed. Such closures occurred in many city locations in March.

“There’s an unwillingness to close the doors for a day so people can come forward with symptoms,” the Murray Hill employee said. “They’re willing to sacrifice health and safety for even a fraction of a percent of revenue.”

Among employees at multiple Trader Joe’s locations—there are 13 in the five boroughs—there is growing anger about the small number of shoppers who are able to enter stores without masks. If a shopper has a medical condition and a letter of permission from Trader Joe’s corporate headquarters, it is possible to walk the aisles of Trader Joe’s without a face covering.

A current employee of the SoHo store recalled a man without a mask who entered the store earlier this month with a letter and wandered the aisles, buying only a few items and approaching female customers for phone numbers.

“Many of us have been verbal about safety measures,” the employee said. “It gets ignored.”

In June, workers at the Murray Hill store were beaten by two men after they were asked to put on masks.

Other city supermarkets, like Stop & Shop, Foodtown, Gristedes, employ workers who belong to unions, either the United Food and Commercial Workers or the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The three major outliers are the Amazon-owned Whole Foods, Wegman’s, and Trader Joe’s.

Union membership can offer certain labor protections and make it easier, at times, for employees to speak up about unsafe workplace conditions, according to labor advocates. They have argued unionized supermarkets and grocery stores were quicker to secure safeguards for workers during the pandemic, including personal protective equipment and glass partitions for employees at check-out.

Stuart Appelbaum, the president of RWDSU, said Trader Joe’s has been a longtime enemy of the union movement.

“Trader Joe’s tries to represent itself as a special type of supermarket but for people who work there, the problems are no different than you find at any other supermarket in the country,” Appelbaum said. “People have precarious jobs. Its workers experience low wages, limited health and safety standards, and have scheduling issues as well.”

Trader Joe’s has taken explicit steps to discourage organizing efforts since the pandemic began. In March, Trader Joe’s CEO Dan Bane sent a letter to all employees warning them against forming labor unions, calling them a “distraction.”

“When this effort is behind us and we return to a new normal, there will be ample time to deal with the union push,” Bane wrote. “I am convinced that any Crew Member who critically considers the question will conclude that being a Crew Member at Trader Joe’s beats being a ‘member’ of a union.”

Bane added in the March letter that when “this current period of unrest has settled down,” if 30 percent of employees at any store demand Trader Joe’s hold a union vote, “we will.”

It remains unclear when that settling down would occur, particularly with coronavirus cases surging all across America. For Trader Joe’s employees, the company had seemed to be homing in on a particular deadline: December 31st, when a $2 an hour wage increase—known as “thank you pay”—would expire and the employee discount would revert to 10 percent from 20 percent.

Last week, Trader Joe’s announced the benefits would be extended until March. Unionization talk remains on hold, however.

“It’s the nature of the company,” Chosak said. “It’s the nature of capitalism.”