Grocery workers are on the coronavirus front lines. Texas must step up to help them

We’ve all seen the pictures on social media or the nightly news. Texans are flooding into their local grocery stores to stockpile cleaning supplies, food and, of course, toilet paper.

They pile into these stores because they are worried. They pile in because they want to protect their families and feel safe.

Throughout it all — working longer hours than ever before — there are grocery store workers. They scan every item and load supplies into bags or cars. They fetch carts and baskets. They stock shelves faster than ever before. Then they wake up and go do it all over again.

We’ve learned a lot in the last few weeks about the illness caused by coronavirus, including that it’s highly contagious.

Now, imagine if your job was to touch every single item in every single customer’s cart in a grocery store. Imagine if your job was to scan and bag their orders, standing a few feet from them, for six to 12 hours per day.

While many of us are being advised to cancel plans, stay home and avoid others, thousands of hard-working men and women across Texas are putting on their work shoes every day and going to crowded places filled with people. They are at risk. They are exposed.

But they do the work anyway. They do it to serve their communities. They do it because they care about their customers and their families.

They need more than our gratitude. They need more than our praise and thanks. They need more than our posts on social media about their bravery.

Counties across Texas have deemed grocery businesses as essential, but not the workers. The state has yet to declare that these brave grocery workers, who are providing the public with essential services, deserve the classification of “first responder.”

States such as Minnesota, Vermont and Michigan have already made the designation, and all it means is temporary access to state benefits. During this pandemic, it means they could get free coverage for all coronavirus treatments, priority tests, medicines and personal protective equipment.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s latest executive order makes grocery workers eligible for childcare help, but that’s only a start. Abbott and executives of counties across Texas have failed to act fully on their behalf, and that failure could cost lives. It should not be acceptable to simultaneously heap praise on workers and then fail to do anything to actually support them.

Words of praise don’t mean much if there are no actions, and when it comes to helping grocery workers, Texas hasn’t acted. But there’s still time. Take action, Governor Abbott.

This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 8:03 AM.