An employee at a Kroger distribution center in Memphis, Tenn., has tested positive for the CCP virus, the company announced Thursday.
Kroger told Fox13 that an employee had tested positive for the virus: “Today, an associate working in the Delta Division Distribution Center has reported testing positive for COVID-19,” the company said. “The associate has not been in the distribution center since Saturday,” the company added, without confirming which shift the affected colleague worked.
NTD refers to the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic.
“The safety of our associates and customers is our top priority,” the Kroger management statement continued. “The distribution center has been thoroughly deep cleaned and sanitized. We are supporting the individual, following guidelines from local officials, and are taking extreme measures to ensure the safety of all employees at our site.”
After the news broke, some of the 400 Kroger workers at the distribution center in Memphis stopped working.
“We really in a hazardous situation and we scared,” Maurice Wiggins, a fork lift driver told the Memphis Commercial Appeal from the warehouse floor.
“Half the workers have gone home,” he added. “They scared for their safety. The ones that is here, they so tense they scared to touch the equipment,” he said.
The other half of the 400 workers that fulfill orders for about 100 stores across the mid-South are working seven days a week, doing 16-hour shifts in some cases. Yet apart from thorough cleaning, Kroger has allegedly not provided any additional safety measures for its personnel.
“They only care about us getting cases out,” Wiggins said, “not our health and safety.” He complained that the company has not agreed a hazard-pay, unlike other major grocers like Meijer and SaveMart.
“I’ve got guys calling me, texting, saying they want hazard pay, saying, ‘I want something if I’m risking my life,'” Barry Brown, a former Kroger warehouse worker and trade union representative for Teamsters Local 667 said. “These guys up in there very upset. For what they’re doing, what they’re providing for the mid-South.”
“They didn’t walk out,” Brown said of the workers. “But they trying to figure out, you know, ’cause we already been asking them, ‘What are y’all doing to protect us? To protect us from everything, cleaning-wise?'”
