BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Target and Stop & Shop have announced pay increases and additional sick leave to employees working to keep the shelves stocked during coronavirus.
In a press release on Friday, Target said its workers will get a pay increase of $2 an hour until at least May 2, making its hourly pay $15 during the pandemic.
The company is also offering a "new option for all team members who are 65 or older, pregnant or those with underlying medical conditions." Those workers will now have access to paid leave for up to 30 days.
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Target is also giving out bonuses to the people it calls its "frontline team members." That includes bonuses for 20,000 hourly store team leaders who manage individual departments in stores across the country. The company is also donating $1 million to the Target Team Member Giving Fund, which assists employees who are most impacted by coronavirus.
Stop & Shop is also giving its employees a ten percent raise, and additional sick leave for its store workers.
In a press release, the President of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Marc Perrone praised the company, saying “grocery workers like Stop & Shop employees have been on the front lines of this crisis, serving the needs of millions of families in the northeast. Protecting them is absolutely essential to our communities and food supply now more than ever."
The UFCW union represents some 70,000 workers across the Northeast alone. Perrone urged every "supermarket, grocery store, and food retail employer – union and non-union – in the Northeast and across America [to] follow the example that Stop & Shop has set."
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