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Trader Joe s rehired an employee who said he was fired after asking for more COVID-19 protections.
Bonnema s letter to the CEO was shared widely on Twitter and inspired a boycott.
Retail workers tasked with enforcing mask rules have risked dangerous confrontations in the last year.
Trader Joe s on Wednesday rehired an employee who said he was fired in February after requesting increased COVID-19 safety protections in a letter to the company s CEO, The Daily Beast first reported.
Ben Bonnema s account of his firing from a New York City Trader Joe s store led to calls for a boycott of the grocer s more than 500 US locations. Scientists cited in Bonnema s letter also came to his defense as news of his firing made waves online.
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People are calling for a boycott of Trader Joe s after an employee said he was fired.
Ben Bonnema said he had asked the company to do more to protect its workers from COVID-19.
Bonnema shared his termination letter on Twitter, and it went viral.
Trader Joe s is facing calls for a boycott after firing an employee in New York.
Ben Bonnema said on Twitter on Friday that he was fired from his job at the Trader Joe s on the Upper West Side after he asked the company to better protect its workers against the coronavirus.
Bonnema shared the letter he had sent to the grocery chain s CEO in which he requested five COVID-19-related changes, including stricter mask requirements, enhanced store filtration, and a three strike policy for dealing with uncooperative shoppers.
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Paul Constant is a writer at Civic Ventures and a frequent cohost of the Pitchfork Economics podcast with Nick Hanauer and David Goldstein.
In this week s column, Constant talks about the hero pay raises some stores like Trader Joe s and Kroger adopted last year.
Kroger later blamed this raise for store closures, despite paying out billions in profits to the company s shareholders.
Last March, when lockdowns began, grocery store workers and delivery drivers were rightfully hailed as heroes of the pandemic. Even as restaurants and bars closed to stop the spread of coronavirus, grocery store employees risked their health, and the health of their families, to keep Americans fed while white-collar workers transitioned to home offices. From the very beginning of the pandemic they put on homemade masks to stock shelves, ring up customers, and keep the supply chain working when everything else shut down.