Grocery clerks get a new title: Emergency responders

They’re in some of the lowest-paid occupations, yet the stockers and cashiers in food stores do tasks that are indispensable to life in a modern society. Now that’s being recognized in a way that often isn’t.

Every day the nation’s 3 million food-store workers deliver the goods, stock the shelves, and ring up the sales that keep America fed. Only now, the coronavirus pandemic has thrust them in a new light as they keep supermarkets open while other stores close down and offices empty out. They’re front-line workers in a...