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H-E-B worker starts petition over grocer’s sick policy after testing positive for COVID

The San Antonio-based company says its sickness procedures have been in place since 2020 and came after “months of research and feedback” from employees.

An H-E-B employee has gathered more than 3,800 signatures on an online petition criticizing the retailer’s sickness policy, saying new changes result in workers being “punished for getting sick.”

The employee tested positive for COVID-19 on Jan. 1 and called in sick but was penalized for doing so, according to the employee, whose petition is anonymous. The employee went to work with a mask and a positive test in hand, and then went home without working the shift.

The employee said H-E-B has a new automated system to track attendance infractions. It assigns points to calling in sick, being tardy or leaving early – potentially triggering disciplinary actions or firing.

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“This automatic system is indiscriminate, uncaring, and corporatized,” the employee wrote in the petition letter.

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It was signed as “a concerned partner” — the phrase H-E-B uses to describe its workers – on Coworker.org, a non-profit workplace platform funded through New Venture Fund. It allows signatures added to the petition to also be anonymous.

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The San Antonio-based retailer, which has more than 145,000 employees operating 420 stores in Texas and Mexico, disputed the petition’s claims.

Spokeswoman Mabrie Jackson said the company doesn’t have a new time and attendance policy or system. The current policy was “piloted in stores and in place since October 2020,” she said.

H-E-B is “committed to the health and safety of our partners and customers” and when employees are sick “we want them to stay home, and our managers are expected to work with them to ensure their well-being,” Jackson said.

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The petition’s claims aren’t “consistent with the intention of our policy,” she said, noting that H-E-B’s policy followed months of research and employee feedback.

Concern over exposing co-workers or customers to COVID-infected employees was a front-and-center issue during the height of the pandemic. The petition shows that workers are still processing how their employers should respond in the third year of the virus.

Employers adopted new policies, bonus pay and extra days off at the start of the pandemic to address the rapid rise of COVID-19 illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths. Employees were then offered bonuses to be vaccinated.

The pandemic was especially hard on frontline workers at grocery and drug stores, medical facilities, and police and fire departments who couldn’t work from home like their office worker cohorts.

As more people became vaccinated, employers believed they could safely bring their staff back to the office. The Dallas Regional Chamber last surveyed its 800 members in early 2022 and found 62% of employers were instituting hybrid work schedules.

H-E-B has often been listed among the best places to work and last year was ranked nationally by Glassdoor. Its owners, the Butt family, established an employee stock ownership plan in 2015 that’s giving away 15% of the company to thousands of its workers.

The employee’s petition asked the company to “expand the list of approved excuses for absences to include legitimate illness. Let our managers make a judgment call to excuse our absences when we are sick.”

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“I’m simply asking that we aren’t punished for something outside of our control,” the petition letter said.

Twitter: @MariaHalkias

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