When Dr. Shanina Knighton is grocery shopping, she picks a gloved cashier behind plexiglass and requests that they change their gloves in between customers. If there’s a cashier using their bare hands with sanitizer between each customer, the infection preventionist makes a beeline towards them.
“I'm fine with the cashier bagging my items in single-use or reusable plastic with sanitizer on their hands because at least I know their hands are clean and don’t carry germs from the previous person,” said Knighton, a clinical nurse scientist and KL2 scholar under the National Institutes of Health.
As previously reported in D.C. Business Daily, reusable bags made of polypropylene plastic and stainless steel provide a stable environment for COVID-19 to thrive for up to three days.
“Stores do not do a good job of making sure their workers are not giving germs to their customers,” Knighton told Legal Newsline. “The cashier accumulates the germs of every single customer they come in contact with just by touching their food items. There are no disinfectant procedures in place in between customers and there are no infection prevention procedures in place for bags.”
The controversy over the safety of single-use or reusable plastic bags at a grocery store is just the tip of the iceberg of a bigger debate that includes lawsuits filed against Safeway and Amazon.
Norma Zuniga, the widow of a Safeway employee, has sued the grocer, alleging that lack of protections caused her husband’s death from COVID-19.
Pedro Zuniga worked at the Safeway Distribution Center in Tracy, California, before he died April 13, according to the complaint.
“Pedro was a person who left an imprint everywhere because his life was defined by kindness to others and devotion to his family and faith,” said attorney Paul Matiasic. “He was someone who put his family first always and he had a big heart.”
Zuniga’s wife accuses Safeway of failing to comply with federal law and federal guidelines, such as Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Guidance on Preparing Workplaces for COVID-19 and enforcing social distancing.
“She lost her soulmate, her partner in life, the father of her children and the grandfather of her grandchildren,” Matiasic told Legal Newsline.
Initially, the lawsuit was filed in the Alameda County Superior Court but was removed to the Northern District Court of California on July 2.
“Pedro was the type of person who would sound the alarm and stand up for his fellow employees and his widow is carrying on his legacy in that respect,” said Matiasic in an interview.
“You can never put a price on human life,” Matiasic said. “People like Pedro on the front lines deserve protection and the utmost protection and care. Regardless of how essential their functions may be in helping to make sure that the supply chain keeps going that doesn't mean caution should be thrown to the word.”
Legal counsel for Safeway, William J. Dritsas, did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but Matiasic said Zuniga did not take off from work because he feared being terminated.
“Under Safeway's progressive discipline policy, if someone missed work, they would be assigned points and the additional accumulation of points results in further progressive discipline, whether it be the issuance of a warning letter or termination,” Matiasic said. “So, effectively, what ends up happening is employees who don’t feel well don't have the option of not coming to work because they may get fired as a result of it. That's something that is an institutional failure on the part of Safeway and on the part of Albertsons.”
Safeway’s parent company is Albertsons and is named as a defendant.
“There are 50-plus people at the distribution center who tested positive,” Matiasic said. “That's indicative of institutional failure. That's indicative of an unsafe work environment. That's indicative of an environment where caution was thrown to the wind and where California law wasn’t followed. That's what we seek to address by way of the lawsuit.”
Amazon was also sued by one of its workers in the San Francisco County Superior Court on June 11.
Plaintiff Chiyomi Brent alleges that freezer suits are not sanitized between uses despite the increased risk of coronavirus infection.
“During Brent’s shifts, there were no designated sanitation workers in the fulfillment center as required, and other pickers [workers] have been told not to clean up messes and have not been instructed to sanitize the work area,” wrote Brent’s attorney Jennie Lee Anderson in the complaint.
The lawsuits come at a time when California is experiencing a spike in coronavirus cases and deaths.
As of July 18, there were 373,363 cases statewide and 7,595 deaths, according to the California Department of Public Health dashboard.