Meet a mom of 2 who became homeless while working for the biggest grocery chain in the US: 'Kroger doesn't care about us.'

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Meet a mom of 2 who became homeless while working for the biggest grocery chain in the US: 'Kroger doesn't care about us.'
Until recently, Jeanne Olsen made $14.90 an hour, bumped to $15.90 at the beginning of this year.Jeanne Olsen
  • Jeanne Olsen's family struggles with food insecurity and has been homeless as she works at Kroger.
  • Olsen is one of thousands of Kroger employees who have experienced homelessness, a survey found.
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Jeanne Olsen, 59, recycles for extra income.

The plastic and metal waste she collects on her days off sometimes fills her entire living room, she said. She transports bags of it by bus from her city of La Cañada Flintridge, California, to the recycling center in the neighboring Sunland-Tujunga, sometimes getting a ride from a coworker when she has too much.

"It's free money," she said. "On the best days, I can make around $115. I have a child who's still with me, and I have to provide for him. So I do it."

Recycling's a side gig for Olsen, who works 48 hours a week at Ralphs, a subsidiary of the nation's largest grocery chain: Kroger. Until recently, she made $14.90 an hour, which increased to $15.90 at the beginning of this year. She said that in her four years at Kroger, her family has struggled with food insecurity and has been barely able to pay rent. They also experienced a period of homelessness.

Olsen is one of thousands of Kroger employees across the country who have had trouble feeding themselves or paying for housing. A recent survey of 10,000 unionized workers in the US found that 1 in 7 Kroger workers faced homelessness in the past year. More than three-quarters of respondents were also food insecure. The problems Olsen has with the company are echoed by fellow Kroger employees in the report, as well as by thousands of Kroger workers striking in other parts of the country: Namely, what she describes as an unlivable wage, limited full-time opportunities, unpredictable schedules, and a short-staffed environment.

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"I've seen people lose their jobs because they lost their homes. They couldn't come to work because they were scrambling to find places to live," she said. "That was almost me."

'I don't have any money to save'

Before Olsen worked at Kroger, she was an entertainment insurance agent for more than 25 years. She said she made $40 an hour and never imagined that she'd do anything else, but her company restructured during the 2008 financial crisis. Olsen wasn't trained for what the company wanted, and her insurance license eventually expired. Her husband passed away, and she became a single mom with two children.

The family got by for a while on unemployment, then extensions of unemployment, while Olsen's daughter worked at Ralphs. Olsen applied for a job there, too, and she became an associate at Murray's, the specialty cheese shop within Ralphs.

Olsen said she's glad to be employed and doing a job she knows she does well, but she's constantly struggling to pay for electricity, gas, rent, and food.

"We live on Top Ramen around here," she said.

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Her family briefly became homeless four years ago, shortly after she started working at Ralphs. She had to move out of the room where she paid $800 a month when she discovered her landlord was stealing from her. For almost a month, she couldn't afford another place, so the family stayed with her brother. Olsen said she'd gotten lucky with the $800 room, but her luck had run out.

"I couldn't afford to pay more rent then. I can't afford a car now," she said. "People always say, 'Why don't you save up for those things?' and I'd respond, 'I don't have money to save.'"

'I teeter on the edge of sanity because I'm so tired all the time'

The survey of union employees comes as Kroger, which is the country's fourth-largest private employer, has thrived during the pandemic, seeing a surge in profits reflected by multimillion-dollar gains for its CEO and shareholders. That's while "real wages" — wages adjusted for inflation — have decreased for Kroger workers in the past few years, the survey reported.

"I work as much as I can, and I still am scrounging to get my rent paid," Olsen said. "Everyone I work with that lived in a house by themselves has to have a roommate now."

The survey found that almost 1 in 5 (18%) Kroger employees said they hadn't paid the previous month's mortgage on time, and about 65,000 of 465,000 national workers in 2020 experienced homelessness. The report said the decline in real wages over the past three decades were largely to blame for data points like this.

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In a request for comment about the survey, a spokesperson for Kroger directed Insider to a study commissioned by the company that said Kroger paid hourly associates more than peers in the retail industry.

"We are an employer who cares about the whole person and our associates' basic needs," they wrote, referencing two internal programs that provide financial grants to employees experiencing emergency hardship or allow associates to access wages sooner.

"The biggest irony and tragedy is that here are people who spend all day around food, and when they go home, they can't afford to feed their families adequately," Peter Dreier, a researcher on the survey, told Insider.

The researchers also said the low pay and unpredictable schedules at Kroger left parents and young people with few options. The study found that high turnover, low wages, sporadic scheduling, and limited full-time opportunities were responsible, a sentiment that Olsen expressed as well. For example, 86% of workers said Kroger was their only source of income, but employees had trouble seeking out second jobs because they didn't have set schedules. And a vast majority of employees work part time, even Olsen.

"At our store, they encouraged me to go get a second job if I didn't like my hours," Olsen said. "I knew a girl who worked three jobs, but she had a car to get to them. I can't afford one. Transportation is a huge part of this. I physically can't walk to and from the store every single day. As it is, I teeter on the edge of sanity because I'm so tired all the time."

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Olsen said Kroger's policies around pay, scheduling, and work have exhausted her.

"They barely pay us. They give us tasks that are impossible to complete in the time they give you," she said. "I'm not a robot, I love to work, I love my customers," Olsen continued, adding, "but Kroger doesn't care about us."

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