"Culture of workplace fear" in Amazon warehouses

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A group of Amazon employees are suing the company, alleging it mandated unsafe working conditions in one of its fulfillment centers that led to the spread of COVID-19 and deaths resulting from the disease.

At least one worker at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island has died of COVID-19 so far, and several others have fallen ill. As recently as this past weekend, employees at the facility were receiving additional newly confirmed cases at the facility. One of the plaintiffs in the suit alleges that after she contracted the novel coronavirus at work in the warehouse, "she awoke to find her cousin with whom she lived dead in their bathroom" after he developed COVID-19 symptoms. She requested paid quarantine leave from the company under the terms of New York law, the suit says, but Amazon failed to pay her.

A former Amazon employee, Christian Smalls, spoke out about the unsafe conditions at JFK8 back in March and organized an employee walkout in protest. Amazon promptly fired him. A few days later, reporters at Vice Motherboard obtained an internal memo about Smalls' firing, in which Amazon senior leadership determined to make Smalls the face of the entire organization movement and disparage him while doing so.

"If possible, make him the face of the entire union/organizing movement," the company's general counsel, David Zapolsky, wrote in the memo. "He’s not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position than simply explaining for the umpteenth time how we’re trying to protect workers."

Amazon also fired several other employees who spoke out about working conditions in the company's warehouses amid the COVID-19 crisis.