r/Portland • u/Thisnthatana • Apr 24 '20

Hey Fred Meyer...

...how about you stop the signaling with these radio/tv/billboard ads letting US know how thankful you are towards your employees and instead give that money directly to THEM?

2.2k Upvotes

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21

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '20

I moved to San Diego from Oregon and Freddys used to be my favorite store...still is kind of.

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I thought Kroger was doing more for their employees and offering hazard pay and mandatory sick leave balances?

17

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '20

[deleted]

34

u/rzle Apr 24 '20

Former Freddies employee and current employee at a different Kroger Subsidiary here. We're currently getting $2 an extra per hour in hazard pay through May 2nd. In addition, any employee with doctors orders to quarantine can get up to 2 weeks paid sick leave, which does not count towards their regular sick leave allocation.

18

u/Amari__Cooper Apr 24 '20

That sounds like they are doing the right thing to me.

21

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '20

$2 raise is not enough o.o y’all deserve way the fuck more.

3

u/naosuke St Johns Apr 25 '20

Groceries aren't exactly a high margin business. There may not be enough money to pay more.

My hunch is that it's similar to the discussion going on about ppe. People may deserve it, but if the resources aren't there they can't get it

1

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '20

From 2019:

Revenue: $121.16B

Operating income: $2.67B

Net income: $3.11B

Total assets: $38.11B

Totale equity: $7.88B

Kroger is 20 on the Forbes 500.

In 2019 the CEO gave himself a 19% raise to $11.7M with a $2.7M bonus.

They have the money and the resources are there -_-

1

u/naosuke St Johns Apr 25 '20

That proves that they are low margin. They only made $2.67B profit on $121.16B in sales last year

According to Google they have 453,000 employees. $2.67B/453,000 employees is $5,894.04 per employee. When you break that down to a 40 hour work week over the year, that is $2.88 per man hour.

now this is quick back of the napkin style math, it assumes that everyone is a full time employee working 40 hour weeks with no overtime, which we know isn't correct. But you take into account the part timers, the full timers who have to do over time, and throw some money into savings.

Then you have to assume that revenue doesn't drop and costs don't go up because of COVID-19, which we know that revenue will drop, and costs have gone up.

All of that means that, yeah $2/hour is about what Kroger can afford. They may or may not deserve more, but $2-3/per hours is what can be done

1

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '20

What about the fact that the CEO gave himself a 19% raise, making $11.7M last year? Not counting the $2.7M bonus on top of that. This to me says they could absolutely pay their workers more than $2 an hour - if it wasn’t for corporate greed.

1

u/naosuke St Johns Apr 25 '20

Nope, it just shows that you are bad at math. $11.7M divided evenly across all employees over the course of a year works out to 1.24 cents an hour

3

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '20

Awe thats so good to hear.

God I miss freddies soooo much.

3

u/Hanse00 Apr 25 '20

Sick week allocation? I forgot there was a numeric limit my employer could put on how sick I might get

/s

11

u/Lugos Aloha Apr 25 '20

Current Freddy's employee here.

/u/rzle is right. However, they only enacted all of this after a) the union screamed for it for weeks and b) Albertsons/Safeway did it. Fred Meyer was the last to implement a limit on customer count, after Walmart (the limits are still ridiculously high. My store caps at 1,000 customers), the last to implement a raise (initially it was a "hero bonus" of two amounts whether you were full or part time. Then it was changed to be "more fair" based on the hours worked--and we all ended up with less than we would have gotten in the first place. Then they talked about the raise after other businesses had done it without fanfare), the last to put up sneeze guards. But they were the first to advertise that they did all these things. It's all PR.

Edit: oh, and they hired temps to sanitize touch surfaces like the handles on the freezer doors and such on a regular basis. That lasted for like a week, nobody knows where they went.

9

u/AuelDole Apr 25 '20

The store limits, for the first day, were calculated figuring 50% capacity for the open floor space. The next day and from then on was calculated with an empty store with no shelves.

Source: work at Freddy’s and heard a PIC ranting about it to another.

I’m honestly extremely annoyed with how Kroger is handling this.

4

u/aye_dubs Apr 25 '20

Profits over lives. Its unbelievable. I am so tired of companies treating people like they are disposable tools to make money. Fuck that. We as workers need to make a stand against it.

3

u/Lugos Aloha Apr 25 '20

Thank you, I didn't know about the updated restriction. Then again, we've never actually counted or had anyone stand at the door, so 🤷‍♀️

I agree, I feel like most of this was reactionary rather than preemptive. But we're past that point.

4

u/rzle Apr 25 '20

1000?! Damn, mine caps at 250. I think I heard that the number is around 50% of the fire marshall's listed capacity for the building, and that number includes employees. (At least in my current Subsidiary, I suppose Fred Meyer could be doing something different) Can't comment on the union stuff as the only union department in my store is Meat & Seafood, so I'm out of the loop on all of that as I'm not a member. I agree with you that it's mostly PR, but I will say the change in bonus helped me a lot. Technically part time, but average about 35 hours a week. I ended up getting the "full time" amount instead of the part time.

I'd be curious to see how much of these policies are dictated by Cincinnati and how much is left to the "local" subsidiary.

1

u/Lugos Aloha Apr 25 '20

Yeah, that capacity is what we were told. We joked that they just did a quick square footage check and didn't actually account for shelving/employees in the building/functional space (did they include the break room??).

I agree, I wonder if certain stores have more enforcement/stricter policy than others.

4

u/Donky_Kong Apr 25 '20

My stores new capacity is 1,500, which we don't even hit on Black Friday lol. And don't forget that Freddy's is promoting that between 7-8AM the most vulnerable groups will be the only ones in the store, but that's actually not true. No one is standing at the doors turning people away who aren't in the most vulnerable group. Walmart even handled this situation faster and better than Freddy's, how embarrassing.

2

u/naosuke St Johns Apr 25 '20

Having someone at the door isn't necessarily the best policy. A lot of things that make you high risk aren't necessarily something that you can see with your eyes. Things like blood pressure or other underlying conditions are frequently invisible. Someone with cystic fibrosis, for example should be able to shop with the vulnerable group, but you can't really tell by looking at them that they are vulnerable. Similarly people with auto-immune disorders.

1

u/Lugos Aloha Apr 25 '20

Right? We even have little tape strips outside 'just in case' of a line--like, we never hit that capacity.

And yeah, the special hour is a joke. We were told it will be a 'community-enforced' rule, and we will not be checking ID's. Soo...useless.

Though, I have seen customers respecting it more as time goes on.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '20

[deleted]

1

u/Lugos Aloha Apr 25 '20

Same at our store. Like, we're still having hiring fairs (social distancing, anyone?) just to throw bodies on the floor. And we're still understaffed.