![]() ![]() “While we should be very proud of serving our communities, at the same time, I know Costco employees have personal concerns and anxiety as well,” Jelinek said. “They were reactionary the entire time instead of taking the opportunity to be a leader in the industry.”īut on March 30, Jelinek told employees in a companywide video that as traffic in stores began to surge, Costco focused on alterations to keep customers and workers safe. “Costco has implemented some good practices now, but it just took too long,” a manager in Michigan told the outlet. The company had sufficient time to prepare for the chaos, they said, after seeing the impact at stores in Asia, the continent where the virus was first recognized. We’re bringing our own, and if we have enough, we give them to each other.”įurthermore, employees said, managers failed to inform them of the confirmed cases among coworkers and were too slow in implementing additional sanitizing procedures. “We were having 3,500 people allowed to come in at a time and no masks have been required,” a supervisor at the same location told BuzzFeed. Lee passed away on March 16, less than two weeks after Jelinek reportedly emailed workers at the company's campus in Issaquah, Washington, that allowing them to work at home would be unfair to colleagues at its stores who couldn't do so.ĬOSTCO LIFTS DIVIDEND AMID CORONAVIRUS STORE DEMAND She collapsed at her Everett, Washington, home the night of Sunday, March 15, after picking up an extra shift the day before, during which she coughed so much that she struggled to catch her breath. Regina Lee, a Costco Travel agent, was the first known Costco employee in the country to die of COVID-19. In fact, a March 21 memo from CEO Craig Jelinek obtained by BuzzFeed suggested the company wouldn't be focusing on press inquiries while navigating what he called a humanitarian crisis.Īt least 75 people across the company's corporate offices and warehouses around the nation have tested positive for COVID-19 and two have died, according to interviews and internal memos obtained by BuzzFeed. Representatives for Costco have not responded to FOX Business' calls and email requests for comment. “They will continue to prioritize the needs of the business over their employees’ well-being, even when we are in a state of emergency. ![]() “Working for Costco during this devastating point of time has become a living nightmare,” an unidentified warehouse employee in Los Angeles told the outlet. WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT COSTCO, THE WAREHOUSE RETAILER To put this in perspective, however, there are more than 240,000 employees working for the company around the world. ![]() Roughly 100 staffers and contractors told BuzzFeed News that the multi-billion dollar company had displayed a lack of transparency on COVID-19 cases as well as a disregard for warnings and that it had failed to make necessary adjustments to long-standing policies. While Costco has become a go-to source for Americans stocking up on the supplies required to weather the COVID-19 pandemic at home, some frustrated employees of the warehouse retailer say it hasn't been aggressive enough in protecting their health. Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox.
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