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PetSmart has upset workers — and put people’s health at risk — by reopening dog grooming salons that promise to get dogs “ready for spring with a new do.”
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The cruise line Holland America is planning to force some crew members to remain on board ships without passengers — and to stop paying those crew members, The Washington Post reported.
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And Marriott International, as The Times’s Peter Goodman reports, has “begun furloughing most of its American workers, jeopardizing their access to health care, even as the company paid out more than $160 million in quarterly dividends and pursued a raise for its chief executive.”
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Is there any remedy for companies that are behaving badly amid the coronavirus pandemic? There is at least a partial one: attention.
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If employees, journalists and — most important — customers call attention to selfish behavior that endangers people, there is at least a chance that companies will stop it. That is, they will decide that the cost of the bad publicity isn’t worth it. Or maybe a company’s executives will even suffer a crisis of confidence.
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As Judd Legum, a lawyer and journalist who writes the Popular Information newsletter, told me:
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| Corporations are always concerned about new information that could harm their reputation with customers, but the pandemic has intensified their sensitivity. Today, a corporation that customers believe is not showing sufficient concern for the safety of its customers and employees could incur severe damage. So companies are willing to take significant action to avoid that fate. |
Legum would know. His reporting in recent weeks has helped cause changes at two major companies.
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When the coronavirus crisis began, both the Darden restaurant company and Kroger supermarkets — which together employ about 600,000 people — kept in place restrictive sick leave policies that had the potential to worsen the outbreak.
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Many Kroger workers could get paid leave only if they tested positive for the virus, even though testing remained limited. And Darden, which operates Capital Grille, Olive Garden and other chains, didn’t offer paid leave unless a state mandated it.
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But soon after Legum wrote about the companies’ policies, both companies changed their policies and expanded leave. As Susan Hanway, one of Legum’s readers, wrote: “In the better late than never department. On the other hand, how many people have gotten sick due to their slow response?”
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Do you know of other companies behaving badly? Drop me an email, at Leonhardt@nytimes.com, with “do better” in the subject line.
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