Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee and Whole Worker
1,000 signatures reached
To: Whole Foods Market
We Demand Safety from COVID at Whole Foods!
Whole Foods workers need Whole Foods stores across the country to keep occupancy limited, require shoppers to wear their masks, and have managers remove customers from the store who won’t wear masks! Additionally, we need a sick time policy that allows us to actually quarantine without losing income. We can’t choose between losing our finances and putting others at risk.
Why is this important?
While the COVID-19 vaccine is becoming more readily available across the country, Whole Foods workers are still getting sick! Management everywhere are allowing pre-pandemic crowd sizes, despite the country still only being a third vaccinated. Mask mandates are rarely enforced. This isn’t new, Whole Foods workers have been reporting all pandemic that management teams have consistently put workers in danger rather than enforce any meaningful safety protocols with customers.
Whole Worker has received reports from workers who were lied to about cleaning crews coming in. We’ve gotten reports of stores where as many as a quarter of store employees tested positive for COVID and where employees were only told to quarantine over a week after management knew they’d worked a shift with someone who had tested positive for COVID.
We’ve even heard from stores where management forced employees to open their store without running water, and thus no working bathrooms or water to refill disinfectant, despite this being a violation of company policy, state law, and health codes.
We’re tired of being put second in Whole Foods’ pursuit of profit and customer pleasing. No profit line is worth our health and safety. We deserve better and we demand safe working conditions!
If you want to connect with other Whole Foods workers taking action for their health and safety reach out to us at https://workerorganizing.org/talk-with-an-organizer/ and a volunteer organizer will be in touch!
