COVID Update

US: Over 6M Cases - 185K Dead - 3.3M Recovered
Worldwide: Over 24.7M Cases - 838K Dead - 17.1M Recovered

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 186   Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 93
*Red indicates change in total deaths

CDC Workplace violence and COVID-19 - 'Duty of Care'
CDC: Panic buttons, safe areas can protect employees from customer violence over COVID-19 policies

Limiting Workplace Violence Associated with COVID-19 Prevention Policies in Retail and Services Businesses

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its COVID-19 guidance this week for retailers and service businesses to prevent workplace violence associated with implementation of coronavirus prevention policies and practices, such as mandatory use of masks, social distancing and limiting capacity. 

Among the agency's employer recommendations are providing employee training on workplace violence response, installing security systems such as panic buttons and alarms and training employees how to use them, assigning two workers to encourage prevention policies are followed and identifing safe areas for employees to go if they feel like they are in danger, such as a room that locks from the inside. 

Employee training should address ways for employees to identify, avoid and respond to violent situations, the agency recommends. Staff should report any potential threats or violent acts to a manager or supervisor and remain aware of and support coworkers during threatening or potentially violent situations. Employees should not argue with a customer if the person makes threats and should not force anyone who is upset to follow prevention policies or other practices related to COVID-19. 

From physical assault and verbal abuse to employees being shot at, workers have experienced various forms of anger from customers reacting to company policies to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. The Service Employees International Union surveyed over 4,100 McDonald's workers and found that 44% of respondents were verbally or physically assaulted by customers who weren't wearing masks.

These violent interactions aren't likely to dissipate any time soon either, especially as more employers, including McDonald's and Starbucks, and local governments require masks to be worn on premise. On Wednesday, Illinois began requiring restaurant and bar patrons to wear a mask while interacting with staff, including when they place an order, receive food and beverages and when an employee services a table. hrdive.com

Resources and Trainings on Workplace Violence

Employers can take action to prevent workplace violence

Provide Employee Training: Warning Signs & Response cdc.gov

Dallas COVID Trending Downward
COVID-19 cases in Dallas County have eclipsed 70,000, even as cases trend downward
“Today’s new COVID-19 positive numbers continue a trend of lower cases,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said in a written statement.

Dallas County health officials reported 219 new coronavirus cases Thursday, with the total for the entire pandemic eclipsing the 70,000 mark. The county also reported five new COVID-19 deaths. dallasnews.com

Dangers of third coronavirus surge in California focus on young people,
essential workers
Even as California finally begins to see declines in both COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations, health officials and experts are preparing for a potential third surge of coronavirus cases fueled by two groups that already have been hit hard: low-wage essential workers and young people.

The summer spike in COVID-19 has started to ease, and governments soon will need to consider how they might begin to reopen the economy further. Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to outline his plans Friday.

A new surge in the pandemic is far from a certainty — but experts said it’s essential that California learn from the mistakes of the last reopening. Of the more than 12,600 California COVID-19 deaths so far, more than 8,800 have been reported since Memorial Day, around the time the economy began to reopen and some people got back to old routines. latimes.com

74% of Org.'s Have Started Travel Recovery Plans
Business Travel Picking Up, but Compliance Is Tricky
New research indicates an uptick in U.S. domestic business travel, although employers still face a changing patchwork of coronavirus-related federal, state and local laws and regulations affecting work travel.

According to an Aug. 5-9 poll of 827 companies worldwide by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), a trade group in the Washington, D.C., area, 74 percent of respondents reported that all or most of their organization's domestic business trips have been cut. That's progress, though—93 percent of respondents reported curtailed domestic business travel in April.

The survey found that 74 percent of organizations reported having started to develop a travel recovery plan and 31 percent planning to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) for their travelers, while another 20 percent will require employees to provide their own PPE in order to travel.

Reviewing Travel Policies for Compliance
"The safest approach is to prohibit work-related travel, but for employers for whom travel is essential, implementing a thoughtful travel policy can help reduce the risk of employees becoming sick or spreading illness to others in the workforce," he said. "As a starting point, employers should ensure that the travel really is essential."

He added that employers that require employees to travel may need to defend that requirement in response to various legal claims. shrm.org

Perfect Example - 'Conference Superspreader'
One Meeting in Boston Seeded Tens of Thousands of Infections, Study Finds
A February meeting of biotech executives became a coronavirus "superspreading" event with a transmission chain across the globe.

On Feb. 26, 175 executives at the biotech company Biogen gathered at a Boston hotel for the first night of a conference. At the time, the coronavirus seemed a faraway problem, limited mostly to China.

But the virus was right there at the conference, spreading from person to person. A new study suggests that the meeting turned into a superspreading event, seeding infections that would affect tens of thousands of people across the United States and in countries as far as Singapore and Australia.

The study, which the authors posted online on Tuesday and has not yet been published in a scientific journal, gives an unprecedented look at how far the coronavirus can spread given the right opportunities. nytimes.com

Law360: EEOC Backs 'Encouragement' for Now
COVID-19 Vaccine May Pose New Challenges For Employers
Law360 (August 26, 2020, 10:59 PM EDT) -- With numerous COVID-19 vaccine candidates in development and the Trump administration pushing for quick approval, virus-weary employers may soon have a tool to bring a sense of normalcy to their businesses. But any policy mandating inoculation for workers creates a minefield of legal risks, experts say. law360.com

 

What the CEO's Read
For the student of retail
A Divorce 64 Years in the Making

Malls Wedded Department Stores: Now a Collapsing 64-Year Marriage

The wedding took place in 1956 in Edina, Minnesota with the opening of Southdale Center, the first enclosed mall in the U.S. Its beloved anchor spouse was Dayton's department store. Here's how it worked in 1956 and up to 2000: the department stores attracted traffic (paying little to no rent) and the malls brought in a myriad of other shops, particularly apparel retail chains which paid higher leasing costs because they were blessed with the huge traffic the anchors attracted. The concept was a one-stop shopping experience, which would compel the shoppers to hang around and browse and shop through the mall for hours.

The mall/department store marriage was beginning to collapse in the 90s as neither partner was resilient enough to prop up the other and attract the customers it needed to thrive.

So, the marriage of Dayton's and Southdale established the model that would rapidly be replicated across the U.S., to the delight of mall owners and their anchors, the department stores. It also welcomed the hundreds of emerging apparel retail chains and other shops, restaurants, movie theatres, etc. It also delighted consumers. Until it didn't.

Manifest Destiny - Broken Vows - The Apparel Apocalypse - The Triple Whammy and Ultimate Collapse of the Marriage - Divorce - Store Closures - Stores in Bankruptcy therobinreport.com

Question for Readers: Would Your Retailer Pay This Tab? Y/N
42% of Employee Population Paid For Unapproved OT
Answer Coming Monday
The USPS Office of Inspector General said the Postal Service exceeded planned and penalty overtime by nearly 14 million hours during the 2019 fiscal year and incurred $521.6 million in “questioned costs” as a result.

Forty-two percent of the Postal Service’s 633,108 employees had unauthorized overtime in fiscal 2019.

“Although package volume grew, overtime costs and hours trended upward and consistently exceeded their planned overtime budgets from FY 2014 to FY 2019, despite declining mail volume and increased employee levels,” the watchdog said in a report, dated August 25. “In addition, management did not always effectively manage their unauthorized overtime or ensure they had complete, accurate, and reliable employee payroll workhour data.”  cfo.com

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CVS puts time-delay safes in Massachusetts Pharmacies to deter opioid thefts
CVS Health said Thursday it will put time-delay safes in all 446 of its Massachusetts pharmacies in an effort to deter theft and limit diversion of opioids. The safes, which are already in the chain's Rhode Island stores, electronically delay how long it takes for pharmacy employees to be able to open the safe. The Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based company said the safes have already shown to be effective in other states. In 2015, after installing the safes in Indianapolis and across Indiana, there was a 70% drop in pharmacy robberies. The company went on to roll them out to 4,800 CVS pharmacies in 15 other states and the District of Columbia, and saw a 50% decline in pharmacy robberies.  bizjournals.com

South Bend, IN: Mother of woman killed at Gas Station sues owners for negligence
The mother of a woman who was killed at a Phillips 66 near downtown South Bend in March is suing the owners of the gas station for negligence in her daughter’s death, claiming the store should have taken steps to protect customers from a foreseeable, violent incident. The lawsuit argues that a high number of police calls to the property — over 60 in the last year — and a previous homicide at the site should have prompted store employees to intervene when a crowd gathered in the store’s parking lot in the early morning hours of March 14, shortly before De’Ashay Thompson, 24, was shot and killed The lawsuit, filed by Thompson’s mother, Christy Smith, earlier this month, alleges the gas station and convenience store was negligent by allowing the gathering on the site and not providing security to its customers. southbendtribune.com

Phoenix City Council approves $475K settlement in viral shoplifting case
The Phoenix City Council approved a $475,000 settlement Wednesday in the case of a family that accused Phoenix police of serious misconduct after their 4-year-old daughter accidentally stole a doll from a store. Dravon Ames and Iesha Harper received the settlement after an encounter with police in May 2019 got widepresad attention when video of officers using excessive force. The council passed the motion 6-2. The initial claim asked for $10 million in damages.  ktar.com

Los Angeles, CA: Woman Alleges Race Played Role in Anthropologie Shoplifting False Arrest
A Black woman is suing the city of El Segundo and the parent company of Anthropologie stores, alleging she was arrested and falsely accused of shoplifting last summer because of the color of her skin. Sheronda M. Bonner’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, filed Friday, alleges civil rights violations, false arrest, etc.

According to the lawsuit, the case “arises from employees of an Anthropologie store who see an entitlement that says only certain people belong in the store, their unfounded and false report to the El Segundo Police Department that accused plaintiff of grand theft and the El Segundo Police Department’s false arrest of Sheronda M. Bonner, an older Black woman.”El Segundo police handcuffed the 53-year-old plaintiff and put her in jail, according to her court papers. mynewsla.com

Tonawanda, NY: Speedway and Police criticized for handling of Customer's arrest
Speedway says it "sincerely regrets" the false accusations one of its employees made against a customer. On July 9th, Town of Tonawanda Police were called to Speedway for a report of a customer cashing in a lottery ticket that was stolen during a smash-and-grab break-in the night before. Eric Martin, a black man, was arrested and charged with criminal possession of stolen property and resisting arrest. Days later, on July 14th, Speedway called the Tonawanda Police and notified them that Mr. Martin had indeed paid for the ticket he was cashing, according to James Stauffiger, Chief of Police. Charges were dismissed. "At the end of the day this shouldn't happened. It shouldn't happen to Eric and it shouldn't happen to anybody else," said Martin, Sr. wkbw.com

US consumer spending rose a moderate 1.9% in July

Best Buy to Turn 250 Stores into E-Commerce Hubs

Coresight Research
Weekly Store Tracker
7,643 2020 YTD Closures
3,326 2020 YTD Openings


Quarterly Results
Abercrombie & Fitch Q2 digital sales up 56%, net sales down 17%
Gap Inc. Q2 comp's up 13%, digital sales up 95%, net sales down 18%
Ulta Beauty Q2 comp' down 26.7%, e-commerce sales up 200%, net sales down 29.4%
Tiffany Q2 comp's down 24%, net sales down 29%
 

Senior LP & AP Jobs Market

Senior Manager – Supply Chain Transportation, Security & Compliance job posted for The Home Depot in Atlanta, GA
The Senior Manager owns the strategic vision and planning for security transportation operations. They will utilize state of the art technology in implementing security measures. The Senior Manager will discover emerging and all security aspects in transportation, design and develop ways in a means to minimize accidents/incidents in transportation operations. careers.homedepot.com