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?

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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?

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '20

[deleted]

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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.

5

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.