By: Peter Shanley
While many retailers across the United States have struggled to make ends meet due to the COVID-19 public health crisis, the online retail giant Amazon.com, Inc. has thrived. With many people feeling nervous to shop at brick and mortar stores, Amazon has provided a solution with their online shopping and front door delivery.
The company has doubled its net profit from a take of $2.6 billion in 2019 to $5.2 billion this year. The company hired 175,000 temporary employees in March to help deal with increased demand and from these temporary workers, 70% were retained as permanent employees to assist the company as the pandemic continued. In addition, another 100,000 employees were brought on in September, in anticipation of the holiday season.
Amazon has been known to utilize incredibly stringent policies on its employees, such as having a quota of tasks each worker must perform per hour, mandatory overtime during the holiday season, and a system that tracks how long of a break a worker takes, generating warnings if the system deems the breaks to be too long. After a certain amount of these warnings, a worker can be fired for lack of productivity. With the increase in staff at its warehouses and its stringent productivity policies in place during the pandemic, the company has faced struggles with their employees having enough space to socially distance and enough time to wash their hands.
While there have been a significant amount of criticisms lobbed at Amazon, the company has implemented policies to keep both their workers and their customers safe. For example, the company implemented 150 process updates for their employees to follow while in the warehouses such as enhanced cleaning and social distancing measures, they have provided protective gear to employees and executed a policy of allowing for two weeks of paid time off for an individual who is diagnosed with COVID-19. On the customer side, in order to reduce contact between Amazon delivery drivers and customers, the signature requirement to receive a package was waived, free masks have been provided at Whole Foods stores, a subsidiary of Amazon, and the company made a commitment to combat price gouging.
While Amazon has had its successes, it is currently facing legal challenges from its employees related to COVID-19. The focal point of the lawsuits is a warehouse on Staten Island, New York. In March 2020, Amazon fired an employee and organizer, Christian “Chris” Smalls. The State of New York Attorney General’s office sent a letter to Amazon stating that after a preliminary assessment, the AG’s office believed that the company may have violated Occupational Health and Safety (“OHSA”) provisions.
The AG’s office believed that the violation occurred when the company fired Smalls, potentially in retaliation for Smalls raising concerns about the health and safety of the conditions at the Staten Island warehouse. Also, the mayor of New York City, Bill Deblasio, stated that Smalls’ termination could constitute a violation of the City’s Human Rights Laws. Additionally, Amazon is being sued in federal court by three employees of the Staten Island fulfillment center, and by their family members. One employee, Barbara Chandler, claimed to have tested positive for COVID-19 in March. Later on, several of Chandler’s household family members tested positive, including a cousin who died on April 7th. The plaintiffs are suing based on the theory of Amazon being in non-compliance with labor laws and relying on “oppressive and dangerous” practices that endanger their workers, even without a pandemic.
It is ironically unfortunate that as one of the largest Big Tech companies, Amazon treats its human employees like robots. For either better or worse, lawsuits such as the ones arising out of the Staten Island warehouse will be few and far between in the coming years as Amazon invests heavily into robotic automation. Another difficult part about this controversy is that in the world’s current environment, Amazon is a lifeline for an incredible amount of people who may not be able to procure the resources they need to survive any other way. We should all be rooting for a business to do well considering the state of the nation’s economy, but that does not mean it should be allowed to place its employees in danger or retaliate against those who speak up about unethical and illegal practices.
In conclusion, our reliance on Amazon has been exacerbated in light of the COVID-19 public health crisis, but that does not mean they may go unchecked in their efforts to maximize productivity.
Student Bio: Peter Shanley is currently a 2L at Suffolk University Law School and graduated from Providence College in 2019 with a B.S. in Political Science and Global Studies.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHTL or Suffolk University Law School.
