Hero pay for grocery workers is already built into their salaries, according to an analyst commissioned by Kroger grocery chain.
“Based on the numbers we analyzed, Kroger paid $1,730 and $1,170 to full- and part-time employees from March 2020 to November 2021 in addition to their regular salaries so they already paid it,” said Dr. Nam Pham, managing partner of NDP Analytics, a strategic research firm that specializes in economic analysis of public policy and legal issues. “We also highlight hero pay through the store credit for gas workers receive.”
Pham is author of the report ‘Kroger Stores Benefit Western Communities: An Assessment of the Enterprise’s Compensation Packages and the Economic Impacts in the West.’
“This is the report I was commissioned to do from the fall of last year,” Pham told the Southern California Record. “This is not about the lawsuit. This is about assessing the compensation packages of Kroger’s hourly workers.”
The California Grocers Association (CGA) filed multiple federal lawsuits against various California cities that mandated an additional $4 an hour in "hero," also known as "hazard," pay for grocery store workers.
As previously reported in the Southern California Record, hero pay is a temporary boost in pay provided to employees who have worked on the front lines since COVID-19 emerged as a health hazard in March 2020. But the CGA alleges that hero pay violates the U.S. Constitution and the California Constitution’s equal protection clause by targeting only certain grocery store employees while ignoring other essential frontline workers, such as nurses and physicians.
In his report, Pham highlights the following three findings.
Kroger provides employment opportunity for underserved populations.
“Kroger is indispensable in communities of color because 75% of their hourly workers are minorities compared to 45% statewide," Pham said. "That means, minorities account for 45% of the population and out of 297 Kroger stores, 75% of the workforce is minority."
Kroger offers competitive compensation packages for their hourly workers in California and three other Western states.
"More than 60% of workers stay more than three years at Kroger stores, which I thought was quite interesting because the retail section usually has very short tenures," Pham said. "Typically, people work less than two years in the retail sector."
Kroger contributes significant economic benefits to the community and the state of California.
"Kroger pays 5% higher than their counterpart in food and beverages industry, and 18% more than typical wine and liquor stores in California," Pham added. "People should also know that over the last 15 years Kroger has started three initiatives to help their hourly workers."
Those initiatives include Helping Hands, which provides financial assistance to Kroger workers in emergency situations, Kroger Scholars where Kroger offers scholarships to the children of their workers to pursue education and the arts, and Feed Your Futures is a fund used to pay for worker education to advance their careers.