Instacart will lay off its only unionized workers as part of a plan to focus nearly 1,900 employees stationed in supermarkets across the country.
The food delivery company employs several thousand buyers who pack purchase orders in stores for pick-up or delivery. This is different from the approximately 500,000 independent contractors who pick up items from different locations and deliver them to customers.
Instacart unveiled plans to lay off about 1,877 of those in-store shoppers this week as part of a change in the way retailers use their services. Affected staff work at stores that will begin using their own employees to fulfill pickup orders placed through Instacart, the company says.
Among them are 10 shoppers at a Mariano grocery store in Skokie, Illinois, who became the only Instacart employees to join a union last year.
Instacart says the cuts have nothing to do with the fact that workers are unionized. But this move has outraged the International Union of Food and Trade Workers, which represents Mariano staff, and imposed stronger protections on food workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Instacart’s dismissal of the company’s only unionized workers and the destruction of the jobs of nearly 2,000 front-line workers in the midst of this public health crisis is simply wrong,” Marc Perrone, the union’s international president, said in a statement. .
The Mariano store is one of several owned by supermarket giant Kroger, where about 366 Instacart shoppers will be cut in mid-March, according to a letter Tuesday, Instacart lawyers sent to the UFCW.
The San Francisco-based startup – which appears to be preparing to go public this year – said the layoffs resulted from retailers’ decisions to place orders with their own workers rather than Instacart.
But it’s also “significantly more expensive on a cost-per-delivery” basis for Instacart to use in-store shoppers in certain locations, compared to its full-service contractors, who can fulfill orders and deliver them rather than pick up items from store workers, lawyer Joseph Santucci said in his letter to the union.
Instacart says it will transfer fired shoppers to other stores where it has open positions or try to help them be hired by the retailer that runs its current store. Those who are cut will receive compensation payments between $ 250 and $ 750 depending on experience, Santucci wrote.
“We know this is an incredibly challenging time for many as we go through the COVID-19 crisis and do everything we can to support in-store shoppers through this transition,” Instacart said in a statement.