Despite soaring revenue and expanded wages and benefits for Target employees, shadow workforce at Target's grocery delivery service Shipt left behind

PL+US, UltraViolet Launch Campaign to Grant Shipt Workers Equal Benefits to their Target Coworkers

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, women’s advocacy group UltraViolet and PL+US, the national campaign to win paid family leave by 2022, joined forces on a campaign to support Shipt workers who are fighting for paid family and medical leave. Shipt is owned by Target Corporation, but their workforce, "Shipt Shoppers,” who work side by side with Target employees lack access to the same paid leave as their Target colleagues. As the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed how people shop for groceries, Target’s delivery business Shipt has boomed with soaring revenue and the addition of 80,000 new working people to meet growing demand. Yet, despite contributing to a critical part of Target’s expanded business model, this shadow workforce is being denied basic benefits. 

Currently Target employees receive up to 150 days of paid medical leave and four weeks of family caregiving leave, but this policy doesn’t extend to Shipt. Instead, Shipt workers are not eligible for paid leave unless diagnosed with COVID-19 or put under a mandatory quarantine. With testing still hard to access in much of the country, Shipt workers must decide between caring for themselves or a sick family member or coming to work and putting others at risk.   

The Target Corporation positions itself, and has received public recognition, as a champion of its employees and a leader in corporate diversity, but Shipt shoppers don’t have access to the same benefits Target has been lauded for. 

“It’s time for Target to end its meaningless virtue signaling and actually invest in all of the employees that keep its business profitable,” said Sonja Spoo, Director of Reproductive Rights Campaigns at UltraViolet. “If Target lived up to its values, it could have a real impact on the lives of the company’s Black and brown workers by extending paid leave benefits company-wide to include Shipt workers. Refusing to do so invalidates any claims of standing for actual diversity or inclusion and shows a wanton disregard for the health and well-being of their employees, especially their Black, brown and Indigenous women employees who are already bearing the brunt of the disastrous impacts of the pandemic.” 

This public health crisis is highlighting the tragic consequences of corporations putting profits over the health and safety of their employees and the importance of policies like paid family and medical leave. Essential workers are featured in expensive PR and ad blitzes, but companies like Target actively endanger their employees and consumers' health and well-being by denying robust access to paid sick and medical leave to all employees. 

"Target's shadow workforce of Shipt shoppers has been working throughout a pandemic leading to increased revenues for Target without even the basic protection of paid sick days and paid medical leave for the working people themselves,” said Karin Roland, Senior Campaigns Advisor at PL+US.“Target must change its policies to ensure that everyone who works in its stores can follow public health guidance to recover and care for their families, keeping themselves and customers safe during this public health crisis.”

Through this campaign, Ultraviolet and PL+US are calling on consumers to stand with Shipt workers and demand comprehensive paid sick time and paid family and medical leave to protect themselves and their families -- no exceptions. 

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About UltraViolet 

UltraViolet is an online community of over 1,000,000 women and men who want to take collective action to expose and fight sexism in the public sector, private sector and the media. Find out more at WeAreUltraViolet.org.

About PL+US 

PL+US (Paid Leave for the United States) is the national campaign to win paid family leave by 2022. Founded by Katie Bethell, who Fortune Magazine named one of the world’s greatest leaders, the organization, in partnership with employees, employers, consumers, and investors, has won paid family leave for nearly 8 million at companies like Walmart, Starbucks, CVS and more.