US retail executives disagree on guidelines that require customers to wear masks in stores, raising the question of whether store employees must bear the brunt of enforcing enforcement measures. public health in the absence of a uniform federal policy.
Richard Johnson, chief executive of Foot Locker, told the Financial Times that after having several conversations with peer executives in the past few days, the sportswear chain would not require customers to wear masks at its hundreds of stores in the United States. Foot Locker’s policy contrasts with rules announced by Walmart, Kroger and other major chains this week.
“Masks have become a political problem, not a health problem. I am not willing to put my [employees] at risk “of having to defend a mandatory mask policy, Johnson said.
Johnson said he was concerned about accounts at other retailers, in which store employees were injured while trying to enforce the mask policy among shoppers. “It has been a very heated debate between retailers and retail CEOs,” he added.
At McDonald’s, 44 percent of employees have been “physically or verbally threatened or mistreated by customers” when those customers were confronted for not wearing a mask or social distancing, according to a national survey by the International Union of Service Employees .
McDonald’s disagreed with the survey, saying the company had made scale-down training available to staff.
On Thursday, large U.S. chains Target and Walgreens announced that they would require customers in their stores to wear face masks in the coming weeks, a day after Walmart and other chains said they would enforce a similar policy.
The CVS drugstore chain also announced Thursday that it would force all shoppers to wear masks, but Jon Roberts, director of operations, said the workers will not force customers to comply.
“To be clear, we are not asking our store employees to play the role of executors,” it said in a statement. “What we are asking is that clients help protect themselves and those around them by listening to the experts and answering the call to cover their faces.”
The new rules come about when coronavirus infections spike. The United States recorded more than 70,000 cases daily for the first time on Thursday, as Florida and Texas reported their highest single-day death totals to date.
Many state and local officials in the United States have tried to balance containment of the pandemic with economic recovery, resulting in inconsistent public health policies from state to state and even from county to county.
That has led to a recent push by corporations for more uniform policies across state lines, hoping to lift the burden of applying the hourly worker mask.
On Wednesday, the National Retail Federation asked its members to establish a national policy requiring customers to wear face masks or face covers, but added that retail employees “should not have to make a critical decision about whether they should risk exposing themselves to an infection or losing their jobs because a minority of people refuse to wear masks. “
Last week, the Association of Retail Industry Leaders, a trade group, wrote to the National Association of Governors to urge governors to adopt “uniform orders across the state to create clarity for companies, customers and forces of order. ”
“One of the things that is most frustrating is that we still don’t have a federal strategy on how to tackle this problem of requiring facial masks,” said Matt Priest, executive director of Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America. “Retailers cannot be asked to be the enforcement mechanism when the federal government itself is unwilling to issue some kind of mandate.”
Johnson of Foot Locker said the lack of federal guidance had been a challenge.
“If there was a general federal policy, it would be a different situation,” he said, regarding compliance with the use of masks.
For now, he makes daily and weekly calls with district managers and store managers to assess what he calls “the conflict over some of the rules on social distancing and capacity limits” from one region to another. He said that at Foot Locker, “no position is based on concrete” and that he was open to amend or revise the store’s policy decisions as circumstances warrant.
Foot Locker operates more than 3,100 stores worldwide, primarily selling lifestyle footwear from brands like Nike, Jordan, Adidas and others. It has become synonymous with limited edition releases from coveted trainers like Air Jordans, for which customers have traditionally formed long lines outside of retail stores on release dates.
Additional reporting by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson
