Grocery Industry Takes on City of Seattle Over Hazard Pay

The Northwest Grocery Association (NWGA) and the Washington Food Industry Association (WFIA) have filed a lawsuit against the city of Seattle challenging an ordinance approved by the Seattle City Council, which mandates extra pay of $4 per hour for some grocery store employees.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court, asks the court to declare the new ordinance, which took effect Feb. 3, void and to grant a preliminary and permanent injunction against enforcement of the ordinance.

“Nothing has been more important to grocers during the pandemic than the safety of our customers and our workers,” said NWGA President Amanda Dalton in a statement. “We have held the front line, served our communities by remaining open, set the standard for safe environments, supplying much needed food and other necessities, offering pharmacy services, including doorstep delivery, managing shortages of essential items, and investing millions to expand e-commerce platforms and curbside and home delivery services.

“After this, our expectation was a well-earned priority position for all essential workers when vaccines became available. Instead, the city council singled out some grocery workers for an increase in pay, while ignoring all other essential workers. This unequal application of ordinance is unfair and illegal.”

In a letter to Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan urging the city to reconsider the hazard pay ordinance, Seattle-based PCC Community Markets CEO Suzy Monford made a similar case, “respectfully request[ing]” that the government consider the impact of a hazard pay ordinance on local, independent grocers and focus instead on worker vaccination.

The lawsuit brought forth by the NWGA and the WFIA alleges that the city of Seattle ordinance is illegal in two ways:

“The inequality of the ordinance is significant and perplexing,” the grocery associations said. Under the ordinance, a worker who makes sub sandwiches at a quick-serve restaurant is not covered, but a grocery worker who makes a sub sandwich is covered. Similarly, a grocery worker who stocks apples in a store will be paid more, but the workers who pick and pack the fruit are not covered. Meat processing workers are not covered, but meat counter grocery workers are. Teachers, hospital staff and other critical front-line workers, including those employed by the city, are also left out, they say.

The associations also charge that City Council enacted the ordinance “with little public process, without industry input, outside of collective bargaining agreements, and without a complete analysis of the impacts of the ordinance on families, communities and businesses.”

“Unfortunately, the council’s unprecedented ordinance, its unilateral action, and unwillingness to work with the grocery industry has left us with no other option than to file a lawsuit against the city,” said Tammie Hetrick, president and CEO of WFIA.

Citing the same November 2020 report from the Washington Department of Health that Monford shared in her letter to Durkan, the associations note that grocery stores make up only 5.2% of the reported non-healthcare setting COVID-19 outbreak events and only 2.8% of all outbreak events in the state. The NWGA and WFIA also point to the billions of dollars the grocery industry has invested in safety measures and additional workforce compensation since the beginning of the pandemic.

“If the City Council had requested input from grocers, they would have seen real data that almost all the individual stores in Seattle experienced significantly decreased sales and profits compared to the year before,” said Hetrick. “Indeed, with entertainment hubs and office buildings closed for the year, and theft levels drastically increasing, grocery stores in the city struggled alongside other business, with many losing money each day they remained open. The expense of the new ordinance will have a number of negative consequences for the community, including fewer jobs for grocery workers and higher grocery costs for consumers at a time when they can least afford them.”

“Our city leaders should be focused on making our community safe and healthy again,” said Dalton. “We already provide best-in-industry compensation packages every day and provided expanded compensation packages as a result of the pandemic. Now, the best way to reward our heroes is to get them vaccinated and to let us help vaccinate our communities.”