How a Modesto essential business juggles keeping the food chain and employees healthy
During our collective stay-at-home order, most of us — at least those lucky enough to be able to work from and stay home — have thought a lot more about our food and supply chain than ever before.
Will the grocery store have eggs? Where can I find cleaning supplies? When, oh when, will there be toilet paper again?
For the owner of longtime Modesto business MTC Distributing Tom Eakin, thinking about the food and supply chain has been his whole life. But now, as an essential business still operating daily with close to 300 employees, he is thinking about the food chain plus keeping his workers safe plus navigating a swiftly changing consumer landscape caused by the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent shutdowns.
Started in 1921 in Modesto by Eakin’s grandfather, MTC Distributing provides goods to some 1,600 retailers across California and northern Nevada. They specialize in distributing products to convenience stores, mini-marts, liquor stores, drug stores and mom-and-pop grocers.
The company receives and then distributes everything from bottled water to frozen burritos, paper towels to potato chips and some 12,000 other items from its 160,000 square-foot fortress-like two-story warehouse on the northern edge of Modesto.
And while traditional supermarkets are brimming with business, many of the smaller stores MTC distributes to have seen their foot traffic drastically reduced as people stopped commuting and stopped traveling because of stay-at-home orders. And, like everyone else, they’ve experienced issues with deliveries coming on time and shortages of the hardest to find cleaning and households items.
MTC offers employment to 260
Because of that, he expects to have to furlough about 50 of his current 260 employees. Eakin said his sales have been reduced by about 25 percent so far. Already the 24-hour operation has moved as many jobs as they can to remote work, and instituted more than a dozen safety procedures as well as increased worker pay and benefits.
The strain of supplying his stores with everything they need coupled with the responsibility of protecting the hundreds who rely on his paychecks to keep their families fed is what keeps him up at night.
“Since this started there hasn’t been a day, an hour, that I haven’t though about that. That’s everything to me,” he said. “My daughter is fourth-generation (in the business) and she works here, too. It’s really humbling. It’s humbling and scary. I think about it all the time. It never goes away.”
On March 19, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued his statewide stay-at-home order, MTC began enacting a series of safety procedures and benefits for its employees. They include:
- Raising wages by $2 an hour as hazard pay for all employees.
- Providing three additional paid days off (which can be cashed out if not used by July).
- Making a $150 payment to all employees to help cover costs for personal COVID-19 supplies.
- Hiring two additional full-time sanitation custodians.
- Staggering employee breaks and lunch times to ensure proper social distancing.
- Increasing employee break times to encourage proper hand washing and hygiene practices.
- Banning outside visitors from entering the facility.
- Taking temperatures and checking symptoms of all employees and shipment drivers before entering.
- Installing extra sanitation and glove stations throughout the facility.
- Providing routine deep cleaning throughout the facility.
- Sanitizing all equipment, scanners and headsets before each use.
- Changing all team meetings to video conferencing meetings.
- Converting one staircase to only traffic going up, another to only traffic going down to help maintain social distancing.
- Observing social distancing practices for all its warehouse and fleet workers.
- Issuing masks to all employees and requiring them to be worn during their shifts starting this week (currently they are encouraged to wear masks).
Modesto company taking health measures
That juggling act of precautions to keep workers safe and rewards to keep them working is exactly what essential businesses large and small should be doing right now. These are by no means the only things owners can or should do. Nor are they guarantees against anyone getting sick, or companies still running into problems. But they go a long way toward building trust, and valuing employees as the true engines of this economy — whatever is left of it at this point.
Businesses that don’t take similar measures, yet still expect more work out of their employees in incredibly stressful and dangerous conditions are setting themselves up for failure. Even with the number of changes MTC has made, several employees have weighed the risk of exposure (which could also make their families sick) versus the current unemployment and federal supplemental benefits available (which tops out around a combined $1,000 a week) and have quit or asked to be furloughed.
These workers have done the potential life-or-death math in their heads and decided to take a chance that a job will still be there when this is over. And the simple truth is, you can always find another job — but you can’t find another life if COVID-19 ends yours or someone’s you love.
“Honestly I don’t blame them a bit. And I am absolutely grateful that these people who have lost their jobs or that I have to lay off are getting this,” Eakin said. “But unfortunately I’m competing with the government for these employees. This will be an ongoing problem, and it’s not just me. Makes you think maybe we’d better take care of these essential worker. It’s Walmart, it’s the Dollar Store, the fast food places. All these workers looking around and saying, ‘I didn’t sign up for this’.”
And many of those jobs pay less than the lowest-level entry job at MTC, which normally starts around $15 to $16 an hour. Eakin employs about 50 delivery drivers, 75 in-store sales and merchandisers, 30 to 40 people in tech, marketing, finance and customer service and the rest work in the warehouse.
Eakin staying in contact with other businesses
Having been in the food supply business for decades, Eakin is in regular contact with other business owners in the industry — from manufacturers to other distributors and retailers — and has been able to learn and share best practices during this pandemic with them. But his fear is if the coronavirus outbreak gets worse, both locally and nationally, cracks in the typically rock-solid chain will start to appear.
Already some meat packing plants are closing across the country where workers have died and widespread outbreaks have occurred. As with almost any kind of health issue, prevention is the best medicine. And — in the absence of universal testing or a vaccine or tested treatment — our only proven preventative measure is for people to stay home. Those who can’t, should take every precaution to keep themselves and others safe.
To those charged with leading and managing these people on the frontlines, it’s their responsibility to make sure every care is taken to ensure their health. They cannot hide. Sure, making money matters, but protecting people’s lives will always matter more. May this disease not take our humanity with it.
“I draw all of my strength from the people that work here. Upheaval can be bad, but it can also bring about positive change,” Eakin said. “Some really wonderful ideas and things have come out of this — even things we’ll keep in place after all this. Not once in this would I ever even fathom to give up or sell or shut the doors. I have too many people counting on me and I’m counting on them. It’s a big team, we’re going to work together and get through this.”
