Tag Archives: Target

Pandemic accelerates new risks for retail workers

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Foot traffic in bricks and mortar stores has plummeted this holiday season as shoppers stay out of stores while COVID-19 cases soar and economic pain lingers for many. But online shopping broke new records over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

While an increase in online shopping and decrease in in-person shopping may mean the end of dubious holiday traditions like “Black Friday Brawls”, retail work could continue to be more dangerous and risky for workers.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, injury rates in retailing surpassed manufacturing starting in 2018.  I’ve written before that the rise of online retailing and automation has decreased retail clerk jobs and increased the number of delivery and fulfillment or warehouse type workers. This trend would lead to increased injuries.

The increase in online shopping has also coincided with the “gig economy.” Whereas online shopping is driven by technology, the gig economy is enabled by technology and political decision to deny gig workers basic employment protections. I’ve picked on Amazon in the past, but even Target has gotten in on the misclassification gig. Target contracts its delivery workers through Shipt who classifies their workers as contractors ineligible for benefits. Contractors for Amazon and Target perform the same work that is done by employees at other companies.

The pandemic accelerated these trends in retail employment. But the acceleration of online shopping has revealed some new risks to workplace safety. The Hy-Vee store by our Lincoln office has moved online pick up to the south edge of the parking lot to accommodate the increase in online order pick-ups. Online pick-ups could previously be made right by the store.

So in order for workers to deliver groceries for pickup at the new store, employees need to move items across parking lot traffic, then uphill into a temporary storage space for pick and then come back across the parking lot into the store. I think arrangement is going to create problems in cold and wet weather as well as creating hazards during darkness.

I am not singling out Hy-Vee, I assume other bricks and mortar stores are making similar adjustments. All institutions have been forced to improvise during the pandemic. But if improvisation comes at the expense of workplace safety, at the very least workers should have basic employment protections. Ideally workers should have unions to have a voice in workplace safety during the pandemic and beyond.

The offices of Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm, which also sponsors the Trucker Lawyers website, are located in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Five attorneys represent plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, personal injury, employment and Social Security disability claims. The firm’s lawyers have combined experience of more than 95 years of practice representing injured workers and truck drivers in Nebraska, Iowa and other states with Nebraska and Iowa jurisdiction. The lawyers regularly represent hurt truck drivers and often sue Crete Carrier Corporation, K&B Trucking, Werner Enterprises, UPS, and FedEx. Lawyers in the firm hold licenses in Nebraska and Iowa and are active in groups such as the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys (NATA), and the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). We have the knowledge, experience and toughness to win rightful compensation for people who have been injured or mistreated.

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Do Employees’ Forced Smiles At Stores Cause Mental Distress?

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Most Nebraskans and Iowans can probably sing a jingle from a regional grocery chain that promises “a helpful smile in every aisle.” But helpful smiles may have a hidden cost for employees.

A summary of 95 medical studies showed that forced cheerfulness by employees lead to psychosomatic issues like trouble sleeping, headaches and chest pain as well as decreased job satisfaction. This so-called emotional labor has also been linked to aggression in the workplace.

Retail and service industry employees are usually required to be cheerful to encourage customers to return. These pressures are likely becoming more acute as certain sectors of retail employment have declined and online giant – and burgeoning monopoly – Amazon has barged into the grocery business with their acquisition of Whole Foods.

Unfortunately, U.S. employment laws are not equipped to deal with the day-to-day mental strains placed on retail workers. Workers compensation laws generally do not compensate purely mental injuries. Workplace bullying or harassment is only legally actionable if the harassment is severe or pervasive and motivated by an unlawful factor like race, religion, nationality, sex, disability, etc. 

But employees have the power to work together, even if they aren’t in a union, to address these conditions through protected concerted activity under the National Labor Relations Act. Recently a group of employees at a Target in rural Virginia banded together to help fire a manager who had been sexually harassing employees. Granted sexual harassment may be different than forcing an employee to be cheerful when dealing with the public, but by working together employees can address unreasonable rules and requirements by an employer.

The offices of Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm, which also sponsors the Trucker Lawyers website, are located in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Five attorneys represent plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, personal injury, employment and Social Security disability claims. The firm’s lawyers have combined experience of more than 95 years of practice representing injured workers and truck drivers in Nebraska, Iowa and other states with Nebraska and Iowa jurisdiction. The lawyers regularly represent hurt truck drivers and often sue Crete Carrier Corporation, K&B Trucking, Werner Enterprises, UPS, and FedEx. Lawyers in the firm hold licenses in Nebraska and Iowa and are active in groups such as the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys (NATA), and the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). We have the knowledge, experience and toughness to win rightful compensation for people who have been injured or mistreated.

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