One thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has made clear is just what roles are essential to keep our society running. Do we absolutely need theme parks to be open? With apologies to the folks running the water slides and twirling the cotton candy, no. Nice to have, sure, but not essential.
The situation has also exposed a trouble spot with essential workers – specifically, how to properly compensate them for their efforts. They’re literally putting their lives on the line by continuing to go into work every day, which is not something you think about when you apply to stock shelves at a grocery store.
It’s hard to argue against hazard pay for essential workers right now given the working conditions during COVID-19.
But just how much hazard pay and benefits the workers who keep showing up every day despite the pandemic should receive is in question.
As one person shared on Twitter, the “extra pay” their best friend received from Walmart inspired a lot of outrage, and the replies showed that their friend was far from alone.
Knowing that Walmart is one of the richest companies in the world, many people expressed disappointment at this display.
“Working for the wealthiest family in the country and your hazard pay is a fraction of a bag of candy,” wrote one person.
“Wow. That’s shameful,” wrote another.
“My ‘favorite’ is the drink cozy with the toilet paper printed on it, which is far less useful than an actual roll of toilet paper would have been,” wrote someone else.
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The post also inspired many other essential workers to share the things their companies had given them during the pandemic.
And it seems that @milkvamp’s friend wasn’t the only essential worker out there who was feeling let down by their employer. For some reason, it sounded like the larger companies couldn’t dig very deep for their workers.
There were some truly mind-boggling entries.
One unidentified company apparently mailed out Cadbury creme eggs to their employees in a poorly thought-out if well-meaning gesture. They did not appear to survive the trip to their intended destinations.
There was no shortage of workers who had been given candy and little else.
Often they were accompanied by a pun-filled note as a way of expressing some measure of thanks, something that at least one worker pointed out was “tone deaf.”
By and large, the attempts to improve morale did not have the desired effect.
Twitter user @Pnutbuttershoes shared this gift from Amazon and wrote that after receiving it, they “honestly just sat there and laughed for a bit before taking off in my van,” calling it “unreal.”
It wasn’t all candy, either.
Like this person, who received a t-shirt from Whole Foods.
“More than I got – a pen that says “covid hero” and I work in healthcare,” wrote one person. “In fact, since I’m salaried, when you look at the hours we’re working, we actually got a pen and a pay cut,” they added .
And then there were some who had an extra layer of disappointment added.
As one person shared, their son, an order picker, had to hand out better goody bags to customers than the workers received, despite facing the public day-in, day-out.
As someone suggested however, these gestures were most likely not from the company, but from managers.
It’s just unfortunate that so many have little, if any, budgets to work with to show their appreciation.
“As a manager in retail, don’t get upset about this,” wrote one person. “Your managers can’t give you extra pay. You should be upset with the company.”
“I see a human gesture by low-level ‘management’ who are likely in the trenches right there with the employees,” wrote another person. “Don’t get mad at them – the real villains of the story are walled off in billionaire’s bunkers so you can’t see them.”
Many of the big companies have indeed instituted hazard pay policies.
Walmart pledged an extra $2 per hour up to a total of an extra $300 for full-time employees, and up to $150 extra for part-time employees, according to a press release .
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told Axios that he thinks the company’s workers “should be rewarded for their hard work, regardless of the crisis,” but that “they’re not coming to work because of that. They’re coming to work because they want to serve. And so I think they should be financially rewarded for that, and always.”
Amazon also bumped up pay to its workers by $2 an hour.
However, the Amazon worker who received a packet of Crystal Light shared that a restructuring of their position with the company reduced the hazard pay they did receive.
Saying that Amazon had indeed intended to pay out an extra $2 per hour, “I was paid $1.75 more before they terminated and rehired me with a subcontractor doing the exact same job for less pay. Including that, my hazard pay comes out to $0.25 more an hour. The two dollar bump also ends in a month or so lol.”
Amazon has come under particular fire for its policies.
While workers received that pay bump, it’s also due to end the increased payments at the end of May despite seeing a 26% increase in revenue growth due to increased online shopping, as Business Insider reported.
The company has also seen outbreaks of COVID-19 in its warehouses, underscoring the risks and hazards that workers are facing during the pandemic.
The House of Representatives has passed a bill that includes hazard pay for essential workers.
As Forbes reported, under the Heroes Act, essential workers making less than $200,000 per year would be eligible to receive up to $10,000 in hazard pay, while those making more than $200,000 would be eligible to receive up to $5,000. The bill includes a wide variety of roles as essential, from doctors and nurses to food processing and harvesting workers to janitors and cleaning staff to grocery store workers.
The Heroes Act has yet to receive approval from the Senate.