At the height of the pandemic, Americans learned who the real "essential workers" are. It's not Wall Street executives or billionaire CEOs who keep our country running, it's hourly wage workers at businesses we need to survive – like grocery stores.

To thank these grocery workers, a handful of cities passed "hero pay" legislation that mandated every grocery store raise wages by $4 or $5 an hour, which is a small price to pay someone who's risking their life by going to work during a pandemic.

In response, grocery giant Kroger shut down its stores in the cities that require "hero pay," claiming the pay increases were just too much for the massive national chain to endure. A few months later and, despite the company's claims that it couldn't afford to raise wages, Kroger just announced that it will funnel $1 billion back to its shareholders in a stock buyback scheme.

We could've seen this coming from a mile away, John: Companies feign that they have low profits when politicians talk about raising wages – but they always seem to have more than enough money for their CEOs and shareholders. So, we're calling Kroger's bluff.

Why do you think Kroger really closed a few of its grocery stores?

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The $1 billion that Kroger is funneling to its shareholders could have been invested in Kroger's stores, customers, infrastructure, and labor force. It would have easily covered the hero pay at the shuttered stores, and the amount left over could have funded renovations and improvements to make those troubled stores more profitable. Instead, Kroger is enriching shareholders with no strings attached through a mechanism that feels less like competitive market-based capitalism and more like corporate looting.

This stock buyback scheme is nothing new for corporate America – in fact, it was legalized as part of a suite of trickle-down policies and laws designed to enrich the wealthiest 1% of all Americans, under the false promise that that wealth would trickle down on to everyone else. Since then, corporations have used stock buybacks to leverage money away from workers and consumers and toward the already-wealthy investor class – contributing to the explosion of income inequality in the last 40 years.

Kroger might have referred to its employees as heroes during the pandemic, but if you follow the money, you can see where the company's priorities really lie. That's why we're calling out Kroger for its lies – and we need you to join us now:

Why do you think Kroger really closed a few of its grocery stores?

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Thank you, 

Paul



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