Essential and Unprotected | The Shift Project

RESEARCH BRIEF | May 2020

Essential and Unprotected

COVID-19-Related Health and Safety Procedures for Service-

Sector Workers

In this research brief, we draw on survey data col-

lected from about 8,000 workers in March and April

2020 as part of the ongoing Shift Project survey of

service-sector workers. This data gives an early and

nearly real-time view into employer responses to the

COVID-19 pandemic, according to workers. Impor-

tantly, we are able to contrast employer responses

across diﬀerent kinds of workplaces, from grocery

stores, to fulﬁllment centers, to fast-food establish-

ments; to chart changes in employer responses over

the ﬁrst weeks of the pandemic; and to focus in on

particular employer responses once the scope of the

challenge had become clear.

Health and Safety Measures

Overall, we ﬁnd that 65% of workers surveyed in the

ﬁve-week period from March 7 to April 9 reported

that their workplace had begun requiring employees

to do additional cleaning of the store or restaurant.

More than half (56%) of workers reported that their

employer had made gloves available to workers, but

just 19% reported that their employer had made masks

available. Much smaller shares reported that their

employer had made new requirements for workers to

wear gloves or masks (18% and 7%, respectively).

Diﬀerences in Health and Safety

Across Workplaces

As shown in Figure 1, the reach of these new health

and safety measures depends a great deal on the type

of workplace. Many workers across workplaces re-

port new cleaning requirements. However, the share

The coronavirus outbreak has had a massive impact

on public health and the economy. In the United

States, the 25 million workers employed in the service

sector have been hit particularly hard by the health

and economic crisis. Workers in some segments of the

retail and food-service industries have experienced

reductions in hours as well as widespread layoﬀs due

to store closures or dramatically reduced demand.

At the same time, workers employed in the grocery,

delivery, and pharmacy sectors have been designated

as “essential” workers and are experiencing an

entirely diﬀerent set of challenges. These workers

are continuing to show up to work—stocking shelves,

and ringing up and delivering essential food and

medicine—risking exposure to a highly contagious and

serious illness and facing increased workloads due to

co-workers calling out sick.

Before the coronavirus crisis hit, workers in the ser-

vice sector were already in a precarious position. More

than half of these workers lacked access to paid sick

leave, and among those who lacked leave, 45% report-

ed they would be unable to deal with a $400 income

or expense shock, such as losing a week’s worth of pay

while recovering from an illness or caring for loved

ones.

The Center for Disease Control has recommended a

set of health and safety measures to protect workers on

the job. However, federal enforcement of these stan-

dards has been weak. The Occupational Safety and

Health Administration, the federal agency ordinarily

tasked with enforcing regulations to protect workers,

has largely left safety standards and protocols up to indi-

vidual employers.

shift.berkeley.edu

Daniel Schneider, UC Berkeley

djschneider@berkeley.edu

Kristen Harknett, UCSF

kristen.harknett@ucsf.edu

Essential and Unprotected

ranged from 75% of pharmacy workers to just 26% of

delivery workers and 41% of warehouse workers. In

more than one-third of grocery stores, coﬀee shops,

fast-food establishments, and restaurants, work-

ers reported that cleaning policies had not changed

during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Access to personal protective equipment (PPE) was

uneven across sectors. While 72% of workers in ho-

tels and motels and 65% of pharmacy workers report-

ed access to gloves, that was true of under one-third

of delivery workers and convenience store workers.

Less than half of those in big-box and department

stores reported access to gloves, and the share was

just over 50% in retail stores, grocery stores, restau-

rants, fast food, and coﬀee shops. While we may think

of online ordering as a way of avoiding the risks of

these brick and mortar locations, just 49% of workers

in warehouses and 56% of workers in fulﬁllment cen-

ters reported access to gloves.

Far fewer had access to masks. As with gloves, access

was highest in hotels and motels, at 40% of workers,

and in pharmacies, at 35%, but the share fell to 4% of

fast-food workers, 5% of convenience store and coﬀee

shop workers, and 9% of restaurant workers. About

a quarter of workers in retail and grocery stores had

access to masks, as did around 15% of those in big-

box and department stores. Here, too, the workplac-

es that back-stop the online economy fell short: just

17% of warehouse, 14% of fulﬁllment center, and 10%

of delivery workers had access to masks.

If access to PPE was limited in our data, policies

mandating that workers wear protective gear were

even more uncommon. Around a third of workers

in restaurants, fast food, coﬀee shops, and hotels

and motels reported requirements to wear gloves.

This share was dramatically lower (around 12%) in

big-box stores, department stores, retail stores, gro-

cery stores, and pharmacies. The share of workers

Figure 1 COVID-19-Related Workplace Safety Procedures (by industry)

Share of workers who reported that their workplace implemented enhanced cleaning or protective mea-

sures in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

New Workplace Cleaning Procedures Gloves Available Gloves Required Gloves Available Gloves Required

Gloves

Available

Gloves

Required

Masks

Available

Masks

Required

Cleaning

Data collected in March and April 2020

Big-box superstore

Department store

Retail store

Grocery Store

Restaurant

Fast food

Coﬀee shop

Hotel or motel

Warehouse

Fulﬁllment center

Delivery vehicle

Convenience store or gas station

Drugstore or pharmacy

Essential and Unprotected

required to wear gloves was even lower in ware-

houses, fulﬁllment centers, and in delivery. Mask

requirements were vanishingly uncommon across

workplaces, at between 2% and 7% in convenience

stores, coﬀee shops, fast food, restaurants, grocery

stores, retail, department stores, and big-box stores.

Just 12% of those in fulﬁllment centers reported a

mask requirement, which was signiﬁcantly higher

than the 5% of warehouse and delivery workers.

Change In Health and Safety

Over Time

We collected reports from workers between March 7

and April 9 of 2020. We ﬁnd evidence of signiﬁcant

change in workers’ access to gloves and masks

and in employers’ requirements that such PPE be

worn. However, even by the end of the ﬁrst week

April, access and requirements to use PPE were

uncommon.

Figure 2 shows that at the onset of the survey, in

early March, 20% of workers reported new cleaning

procedures at their workplaces. This share rose

sharply by mid-March to almost 60%, where it has

held through early April.

The share of workers reporting access to gloves

at work has followed a similar trajectory, rising

rather steadily from 20% in early March to over

50% by the end of that month. Access to masks was

considerably slower to increase. Mask access was

very low (under 10%) at the outset of the survey in

early March. These low levels of access continued

through the end of March and only began to rise in

April, reaching 40% by the end of the ﬁrst week in

April.

Requirements to wear gloves and masks were

implemented even more slowly, remaining under

10% through the third week of March, and then only

rising to 20% in late March (for gloves) and in early

April (for masks).

These plots show evidence that employers ﬁrst

moved to ramp up cleaning, then access to gloves,

and then access to masks. However, access to PPE

and, especially, requirements to wear PPE, remain

very low, with just 50% of workers having access to

gloves, 40% access to masks, and only 20% required

to wear either by early April, even as the extent and

severity of the COVID-19 outbreak was clear by that

time.

New Cleaning

Procedures

Gloves Available

Gloves Required

Masks Available

Masks Required

Figure 2 Changes to Workplace Safety Procedures During COVID-19 (March-April 2020)

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

40%

30%

20%

10%

50%

Percent of Workers

March 14March 7 March 21 March 28 April 4

Essential and Unprotected

Among big-box stores, at least three-quarters

of workers at Costco and Home Depot reported

additional cleaning requirements compared with

64% of workers at Walmart. Additional cleaning was

slightly more common in the grocery sector, in which

Kroger workers were the most likely (84%) and Publix

workers were least likely (70%) to report additional

cleaning requirements.

There was far more variation in the food-service

and warehouse sectors. Among food-service ﬁrms,

Domino’s and McDonald’s workers were much

more likely (70-72%) to report additional cleaning

compared with workers at Olive Garden and Burger

King (43-45%). In the warehouse/fulﬁllment sector,

almost three-quarters of Costco workers reported

additional cleaning, compared with closer to 50% of

warehouse workers at Home Depot and Amazon, and

only 21% of workers at UPS.

In the pharmacy sector, four out of ﬁve Rite Aid and

Walgreens workers reported additional cleaning

Employer Variation in Health

and Safety

By late March, the true scope and severity of the

COIVD-19 outbreak was plain. Yet, we observe

signiﬁcant variation in the extent to which employers

had adopted health and safety practices in the period

between March 28 and April 9. These next tabulations

focus on the subset of companies that we surveyed

during this period across ﬁve sectors: big box/

superstore, grocery, food service (combining fast

food and restaurant), warehouse/fulﬁllment centers,

and pharmacy.

Figure 3 shows the percent of workers by compa-

ny and sector who reported that their employer re-

quired additional cleaning of the workplace in re-

sponse to the coronavirus. Overall, a large share of

workers reported additional cleaning requirements,

but some companies and sectors were more proac-

tive with than others.

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Costco

Home Depot

Walmart

Big Box/Superstore

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Kroger/QFC

Aldi

Food Lion

Whole Foods

Safeway

Publix

Grocery

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Domino’s

McDonald’s

Chipotle

Subway

Dunkin’

Waﬄe House

Pizza Hut

Taco Bell

In-N-Out

Olive Garden

Burger King

Food Service

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Costco

Home Depot

Amazon

UPS

Warehouse/Fulﬁllment

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Rite Aid

Walgreens

CVS

Pharmacy

Figure 3 Additional Cleaning Measures by Company and Sector

Essential and Unprotected

requirements, compared with 61% of workers at

CVS.

Figure 4 presents worker reports of the availability

of gloves and requirements to wear them in the

workplace. In the big-box sector, Costco workers were

the most likely to report that gloves were available

(83%) and Walmart workers were the least likely

(42%). Variation was also wide in the grocery sector,

with 95% of workers at Aldi reporting that gloves

were available compared with just 47% of workers at

Publix. In both of these sectors, requiring gloves was

uncommon, with no more than one-third of workers

reporting this as a requirement.

In the food-service sector, availability of gloves

ranged from 78% for Pizza Hut workers to just 36%

for Chipotle workers. Although the requirement

to wear gloves tended to be uncommon, Taco Bell

and Burger King stood out, with two-thirds of

workers reporting that gloves were required in their

workplace.

Among warehouse and fulﬁllment workers, 90% of

Costco workers reported having gloves available, but

only 35% of UPS workers did. Amazon fell in between,

with 51% of workers reporting that they had gloves

available from their employer.

In the pharmacy sector, between 64% and 70% of

workers reported having gloves available at work.

Figure 5 shows worker reports of the availability

of masks and requirements to use them at work.

Overall, masks were far less commonly available

than gloves, in spite of the recommendation—and, in

some localities, the legal requirement—that masks be

worn in public settings such as stores.

Across sectors and companies, only at CVS (72%)

and Aldi (56%) did more than half of workers report

that masks were available for them at work. In food

service, only Domino’s provided masks for at least

one-third of workers. The rest of the food service

companies provided masks for only 16% or fewer of

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Costco

Home Depot

Walmart

Big Box/Superstore

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Aldi

Whole Foods

Kroger/QFC

Safeway

Food Lion

Publix

Grocery

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Pizza Hut

Dunkin’

McDonald’s

Taco Bell

Burger King

Waﬄe House

Domino’s

Subway

In-N-Out

Olive Garden

Chipotle

Food Service

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Costco

Home Depot

Amazon

UPS

Warehouse/Fulﬁllment

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

CVS

Rite Aid

Walgreens

Pharmacy

Figure 4 Gloves Available and Required by Company and Sector

Gloves Available Gloves Required

Essential and Unprotected

in terms of access to PPE like gloves and masks. Over

the ﬁve-week period from March 7 to April 9, just

18% of workers reported new requirements to wear

gloves, and just 7% new requirements to wear masks.

These measures have also been uneven across sectors.

Of particular concern, masks were rarely available

in food service, grocery, big box, or fulﬁllment,

and access reached above 25% only in hotels and

pharmacies, the only sectors where meaningful shares

of workers were required to wear masks. While access

to gloves is higher, requirements to wear them were

also uncommon across sectors, with rates especially

low in warehouses, fulﬁllment centers, and delivery.

At the outset of our survey in early March, additional

cleaning as well as access to PPE and requirements

to wear PPE was very uncommon. There has been a

large increase in cleaning and access to gloves, which

rose from 20% of workers to 60% by early April.

Requirements to wear gloves also increased, albeit

much more slowly, and only reached 20% in early

workers, and at Subway and McDonald’s almost no

workers had masks available.

In late March and early April, employers appeared to

be most responsive in requiring additional workplace

cleaning, often provided gloves, but rarely provided

masks. Requirements to wear gloves or masks were

uncommon in most workplaces.

Conclusion

Workers in grocery, big-box stores, pharmacies, food

service, and fulﬁllment are providing the essential

services that allow millions of Americans to shelter

in place. Eﬀective health and safety measures are

needed—to protect the safety of these workers, as

well as the safety of customers who venture out to

procure food, medicine, and other essential goods.

New data from The Shift Project show that there is a

long way to go for employers to ensure that these health

and safety needs are being met. This is particularly so

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Home Depot

Costco

Walmart

Big Box/Superstore

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Aldi

Food Lion

Whole Foods

Kroger/QFC

Safeway

Publix

Grocery

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Domino's

In-N-Out

Pizza Hut

Taco Bell

Burger King

Chipotle

Olive Garden

Waﬄe House

McDonald's

Dunkin

Subway

Food Service

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

Home Depot

Costco

Amazon

UPS

Warehouse/Fulﬁllment

25%

50%

75%

100%

% of Workers

CVS

Walgreens

Rite Aid

Pharmacy

Figure 5 Masks Available and Required by Company and Sector

Masks Available Masks Required

Essential and Unprotected

April. Access to masks and requirements to wear

masks was near zero through much of March, even

as the scope of the pandemic became clear. By early

April, 40% of workers reported access to masks, but

even then, just 20% reported requirements to wear

masks.

The Shift data also show some workplaces were far

more proactive than others in instituting additional

cleaning and providing masks and gloves to contain

the spread of the virus. Among big-box stores and

warehouse and fulﬁllment centers, Costco and Home

Depot stand out and Walmart, Amazon, and UPS lag

in terms of cleaning, gloves, and masks. In grocery,

larger shares of workers at Aldi report cleaning,

gloves, and masks, while workers at Publix and

Safeway report the fewest new protective measures. In

pharmacy, CVS workers report less new cleaning, but

more access to and requirements to use PPE. Health

and safety measures are most variable across ﬁrms in

food service, with the share of workers reporting new

cleaning procedures ranging from 75% at McDonald’s

to 43% at Burger King, and the share with access to

masks ranging from more than a quarter at Domino’s

to essentially zero at Subway. Yet, even as there is

variation across ﬁrms, requirements to wear masks

never exceed one-third of workers.

To address these safety shortfalls, Senator Elizabeth

Warren and Representative Ro Khana recently

proposed a 10-point “essential worker bill of rights.”

Their proposal would require that workers have

access to necessary protective equipment in their

workplaces, stipulates safety procedures when

COVID-19 cases occur in a workplace, and would

provide hazard pay for workers taking risks to provide

essential services.

In the absence of comprehensive federal action, states

and localities can play an important role in promoting

workplace health and safety and public health. States

and localities have the authority to require and enforce

safety standards such as cleaning requirements and

use of gloves and masks, and to require physical

distancing in workplaces.

Until safety standards such as these are strengthened

and enforced, workers’ health and safety—and by

extension that of the public—are left to the discretion

of employers. We ﬁnd that many employers in front-

line industries have been slow to act, and that workers

remain underequipped in such vital areas as grocery,

fulﬁllment, food service, and pharmacy.

For more information, visit us at shift.berkekey.edu, where

you can access more frontline worker reports, including:

Essential and Vulnerable: Service-Sector Workers and

Paid Sick Leave

Estimates of Workers Who Lack Access to Paid Sick

Leave at 91 Large Service Sector Employers

It’s About Time: How Work Schedule Instability Matters

for Workers, Families, and Racial Inequality

Paid Sick Leave in Washington State: Evidence on

Employee Outcomes, 2016–2018

Daniel Schneider is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at

the University of California, Berkeley.

djschneider@berkeley.edu

Kristen Harknett is an Associate Professor of Sociology at

the University of California, San Francisco.

kristen.harknett@ucsf.edu

The authors gratefully acknowledge the work of Megan

Collins and Connor Williams in the preparation of this

report.

The Shift Project gratefully acknowledges funding from the

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, National Institutes of

Health (NICHD), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,

The James Irvine Foundation, the W.T. Grant Foundation,

and support from the Institute for Research on Labor and

Employment at UC Berkeley. The views expressed here do

not necessarily reﬂect the oﬃcial views of the sponsors.

Essential and Unprotected

Methodological Appendix

The Shift Project has collected survey data from hourly service sector workers employed at large retail and food

establishments since the fall of 2016. This brief focused on a subsample of 8,028 hourly service sector workers

employed at 47 of the largest food-service and retail ﬁrms who were interviewed between March 7 and April 9,

2020. The survey data collection was national in scope and the survey sample includes respondents from all 50

U.S. states and Washington, D.C. Uniquely, The Shift Project data identify the ﬁrm at which each respondent works

and contains substantial numbers of respondents at each of the 47 ﬁrms described here. The average number of

respondents per ﬁrm is 171.

The Shift Project recruits survey respondents using online Facebook/Instagram advertisements, targeted to

workers employed at large retail and food service employers. Those who responded to the Shift survey invitation

were automatically routed to a survey landing page where they were asked to consent to participate in the

study, then began the online self-administered survey using the Qualtrics platform. As an incentive, those who

completed the survey and provided contact information were entered into a lottery for an Apple iPad. The survey

included modules on job characteristics, work schedules, demographics, economic stability, health, parenting,

and child outcomes. To screen out invalid survey responses, we used an attention ﬁlter (a question that instructed

respondents to select a particular response category to verify the accuracy of their responses) as well as a speed

ﬁlter (discarding data for surveys that were completed too hastily).

The survey recruitment approach yields a non-probability sample of workers, which may diﬀer from the broader

population of service sector workers. Therefore, the estimates in this brief may diﬀer somewhat from the broader

population of workers. To mitigate this potential bias, we have applied weights that adjust our sample to reﬂect the

universe of service sector workers in the United States. These weights are constructed in two stages.

First, we construct survey weights to adjust the demographic characteristics of the Shift survey sample to match

the demographic characteristics of service-sector workers in the American Community Survey (ACS) for the years

2008-2017. We align the ACS sample with the Shift sample by selecting workers in the ACS who are employed in

the same occupations and industries as the Shift sample.

Second, to ensure that our sample accurately reﬂects the distribution of employment types among large retail

and food-service employers, we use data from the Reference USA database of U.S. establishments. The RefUSA

database contains a detailed listing of all retail and food establishments nationally. RefUSA contains the size of

the workforce for each establishment, which we aggregate up to the ﬁrm level. Then, using the aggregated RefUSA

employer data, we weight our Shift survey sample to match the distribution of workers by ﬁrm.

In our analysis of the overall extent of COVID-related health and safety procedures, we estimate weighted (using

the combined demographic and employer size weights) unadjusted descriptive statistics. In our analysis of worksite

diﬀerences in COVID-related health and safety procedures, we present predicted levels from weighted regression

models that adjust for age, gender, race/ethnicity, speaking a language other than English at home, having children,

union membership, job tenure, and being a manager. In our analysis of change over time, we present weighted

three-day moving averages (current period with two lags). In our tabulations of diﬀerences by employer, we group

employers by the type of worksite at which employees report working and apply the demographic weights, but not

the second-stage employment size weight calculated from the RefUSA data.

For a detailed discussion of The Shift Project data collection, methodology, and data validation, see Schneider,

D. and K. Harknett. 2019. “What’s to Like? Facebook as a Tool for Survey Data Collection.” Sociological Methods &

Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124119882477.