Striking Instacart worker says training, protective measures are needed amid pandemic: 'It’s not worth being on a ventilator'

Yahoo Lifestyle spoke with Ashley Johnson, an Instacart shopper from Washington who said she’s stopped working for the company because she feels the conditions are unsafe.

Video transcript

ASHLEY JOHNSON: Instacart is advertising themselves as almost like a disaster response and an essential service. They're saying you stay home, we'll get your groceries for you.

What's not communicated in that is that a lot of these shoppers don't even have hand sanitizer or disinfectant wipes. They certainly don't have any other forms of PPE. My fear is that it's essentially going to become delivering coronavirus.

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Even before coronavirus, Instacart was not a great work environment. In the last year, there was four pay cuts. It's always kind of a game of tug of war with Instacart a little bit, where, at one point, they were stealing our tips.

This is actually the fifth strike that has happened with Instacart. We are asking for a hazard pay. Essentially what's happening is to do our job, where we used to be able to make a certain amount of money, we could do two jobs an hour or two jobs in two hours. Jobs now take 30% more time.

This is the most media attention we've ever got, and I think it really helped that a lot of other workers in similar positions to us also walked out.

At this point, Bernie Sanders has tweeted it. Elizabeth Warren has tweeted it. Joe Biden has tweeted it. Every news outlet, from TV to print to talk show, they've all talked about it.

We're told, don't go to the grocery store, but Instacart shoppers are in the grocery store all day and then, you know, bringing that risk home to their family.

As a person in a community, it's kind of scary to know that we already have a couple hundred thousand people in the stores with Instacart, and their response to all of this was to say, "Don't worry we're going to hire 300,000 more."

The customers that we serve, so many of them already were elderly or sick. We felt like letting Instacart run as it was putting them at risk.

So then they came out with this sick pay policy. And it sounds really great, right, that suddenly Instacart shoppers have paid time off. But that's not what it is. You have to qualify and it's very restrictive. You have to get a positive COVID-19 test, and then you would only be paid for the last 14 days up until that's approved.

Often hear the test results can take like 12 days, so at that point you have two days of income.

But what's happening is a lot of shoppers have paid their co-pays and have paid their tests. They've jumped all those hoops, they've managed to qualify for a test, which is limited anyway, and they're trying to send in paperwork to Instacart. Instacart is rejecting it and saying, "Oh, no, this is mis-worded."

It's not real sick leave. I don't think it was designed to actually pay out. I think it was designed to be a PR move.

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When I was in a store the other day, I saw Instacart shoppers that were symptomatic. They feel, why even bother applying for this paid time off? I know I'm not going to get it, and I can't afford to wait two weeks to see if I'm going to get it.

For myself, personally, I'm not taking any Instacart orders. I just don't want to be working next to people that are sick. I don't want to encourage more sick people to be in the store.

Big thing that people seem to be saying is, like, I just wash my hands and I hope for the best. I wash my hands when I get to the store, I wash my hands when I drop off. I don't-- you know, I drop things on the porch instead of face to face with customers. I just sort of take my anxiety home and hope that nothing happens.

If you don't feel safe to work, don't work. Don't go back until you feel 100% safe. Until you can do your job as you need to do, it's not worth being on a ventilator for $7.