Workers at two grocery delivery firms are reporting delays in getting personal protective equipment (PPE) from the companies, even as cities begin to require customers to wear masks to enter the stores.<\/p>\n
A dozen shoppers at Shipt and Instacart recounted delays, unfilled commitments and challenges in getting masks, hand sanitizer and gloves in interviews Monday with The Hill.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstacart and Shipt [are] spending all of their time working on their PR, trying to sound good, but not actually doing anything that helps workers,\u201d a spokesperson for the organizing group Gig Workers Collective told The Hill.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re all saying \u2018we\u2019re doing this and that,\u2019 but we still don’t have any PPE.\u201d<\/p>\n
Demand for the firms has exploded as states and cities recommend individuals stay home to slow the spread of the coronavirus.<\/p>\n
Shipt\u2019s commitments:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Shipt sent an email, reviewed by The Hill, on April 5 to all of its shoppers saying that they could pick up a set of gloves and mask from any Target, which owns the grocery delivery company.<\/p>\n The email also recommended \u201cusing the CDC\u2019s latest resource to make your own cloth face covering out of cloth or old t\u2011shirts,\u201d if they needed a mask immediately.<\/p>\n Multiple workers said their local stores did not have equipment for them, and many locations seemed unaware that they were supposed to have the protective gear.<\/p>\n And Instacart\u2019s:\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Instacart announced April 2, after a strike by its workers, that it would be providing each full-service shopper with a kit including a reusable face mask, hand sanitizer and a thermometer.<\/p>\n Shoppers can request kits on Instacart\u2019s website. They can also request a single bottle of hand sanitizer.<\/p>\n Instacart shoppers who spoke to The Hill said the kits were labelled as either coming soon or unable to order until Sunday night, when they became available for pre-order. Sanitizer has continuously been sold out, according to the shoppers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Workers at two grocery delivery firms...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23634,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23633\/revisions\/23634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}