Whole Foods suggests workers share paid time off amid coronavirus outbreak

Whole Foods outraged its employees this week by suggesting healthy employees generously donate their unused vacation time to fellow workers who get sick during the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

CEO John Mackey sent out the recommendation to employees earlier this week, according to Motherboard.

For any employee who tests positive for the virus, the CEO’s email offers two weeks paid time off, plus unlimited unpaid time off for all of March.

“Team Members who have a medical emergency or death in the immediate family can receive donated PTO hours,” Mackey wrote in an email obtained by the outlet, “not only from Team Members in their own location, but also from Team Members across the country.”

Donating paid time off is a longstanding practice at the company. But it has angered employees, who felt Whole Foods could go further to provide financial relief, so that potentially infected workers don’t have to choose between clocking in while sick or not working and receiving no pay, according to Motherboard.

The grocer is a subsidiary of the largest company in the world, Amazon.

“Considering [Whole Foods] is a billion-dollar company, I think it is selfish asking the retail workers to figure it out within themselves,” a Whole Foods cashier told the outlet.

“The response from [Whole Foods and Amazon] has been quite poor, being a front end cashier I feel like we are the most exposed to the situation.”

Amazon received similar blowback this week when it told its warehouse employees they would also only receive two weeks of paid time off — while at the same time advising salaried employees to work from home indefinitely if they fall sick, Buzzfeed reported.