For Oregon’s grocery workers, a long wait for vaccination

For the last year, most people have dramatically decreased the number of interactions they have outside their immediate family. A trip to the grocery store has often been the biggest — and riskiest — outing of the week.

But for the workers at those stores, it’s been a different story.

“While so many folks sat at home, my members drove to work when there wasn’t any traffic on the road and had lines waiting for them at work of folks wanting to buy, you know, toilet paper and Lysol and all that,” said Dan Clay, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555, a union that represents 28,000 grocery, retail, manufacturing and healthcare workers in Oregon and SW Washington.

A lot of those workers are at the region’s largest grocery chains like Fred Meyer, Safeway at Albertsons, and it hasn’t been easy for them.

“We have had numerous examples where a customer has engaged with one of our members,” Clay said. “And in some cases, they pulled off their masks and spit at them because of their anger over being even asked to wear a mask.

“It’s been hell over the last year for them.”