President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Marc Perrone said in an interview with CBS Money Watch published Monday that stores, not workers, should remove customers for not wearing masks.
There are 35,000 UFCW members who were diagnosed with COVID-19 or had family members contract it, according to CBS News.
“Nobody thinks when they go to a food store that they may get something at work that may not allow them to live the rest of their life,” Perrone told CBS.
In his 45 years in the supermarket industry, Marc Perrone knows of only two people who died on the job. This year alone, that figure has passed 100. https://t.co/1eS15UPHv6
— WBTV News (@WBTV_News) September 8, 2020
“On a normal day, there may be anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 people in a grocery store. During the early stages of the pandemic, there were as many as 10,000 people through those stores on a daily basis,” Perrone told CBS when asked how COVID-19 has changed the way people shop. (Related: ‘Not The Mask Police’: Grocery Workers’ Unions Want Store Owners To Deny Non-Mask Wearers Entry)
“We’ve seen people get really, really upset — just because we’ve asked people wear masks inside stores,” he added.
Perrone, however, said that workers should not be responsible for telling customers without proper face coverings to leave.
“I don’t think that our workers ought to be the mask police, either. The management in the store, quite honestly, they’re the ones that control the keys, they’re the ones that should say something to the consumer,” Perrone told CBS. “And if they have a customer that’s being unruly, they always have the ability to call the police and ask the police to show up.”
Per CBS, 100 grocery workers have died from the virus so far.