Why Is The Supply Chain All Jacked Up?
A family friend called me the other day asking why it felt like she was paying twice as much for groceries as last year and why she couldn’t always find some of her favorite items. I’ve also noticed some local grocery chains are raising prices, but they are also running 5-10% out of stocks on a weekly basis. In particular, the smaller, local stores that do not have the volume-based, priority agreements that larger chains leverage seem to be affected most. The grocery industry is facing a confluence of factors that will impact costs and in-stock rates for the foreseeable future, including worker pushback and turnover, stark wealth inequalities, raw material cost increases, multiple layers of supply chain logjams, as well as fragile logistics systems that just aren’t built to withstand these pressures. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
This week we will look at the most visible aspect of the supply chain crisis, and that is labor. But this is not about scapegoating and demonizing workers for avoiding shitty jobs. In reality, Covid-19 has had a devastating impact on food system workers over the past 18 months. Over 90,000 processing and farmworkers were infected and at least 465 died, while over 43,300 grocery workers fell ill and at least 197 died. These numbers don’t account for the friends, family and community members who were also impacted, particularly in meatpacking towns that were Covid-19 hotspots. Many food system workers who fought off the virus are still experiencing long-haul symptoms, and many who remain in the industry are bitter, fearful and disillusioned about the pace and working conditions. Our supply chain and food industry workforce have faced unprecedented trauma, yet keep grinding it out every day to feed us.
