Defending itself against the New York Attorney General’s claims in a preventative lawsuit, Amazon says it has spent more than $ 10 billion on responding to COVID-19, including extensive safety precautions for logistics center workers. (Photo from Amazon)
Amazon filed a preventive lawsuit on Friday morning against New York Attorney General Letitia James defending her response to COVID-19 at major facilities in Staten Island and Queens, New York, and across the country. The company criticized the remedies proposed by the Attorney General’s office as “exorbitant demands”, saying they are the result of a faulty assessment of its working conditions and safety precautions.
New York AG response: in a statementJames called Amazon’s lawsuit “a sad attempt to distract from the facts and evade responsibility for its failure to protect working employees from a deadly virus,” and vowed not to be intimidated by “corporate thugs who put profits over workers ‘health and safety.’ . «
“Throughout this pandemic, Amazon employees have been forced to work in unsafe conditions, while the company and its CEO earned billions from their backs,” James says in the statement.
Amazon’s goal: The company is petitioning the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York by a statement that the state attorney general lacks the authority to regulate safe workplace conditions governed by federal law, or to take action on allegations that the company retaliated against workers who protested those conditions .
Background: The dispute dates back to the early days of the pandemic at Amazon’s JFK8 compliance center in Staten Island and the DBK1 delivery station in Queens.
It involves two Amazon workers, Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer, who spoke about security conditions at Amazon’s giant JFK8 fulfillment center.
Amazon fired Smalls, but insists it was because he broke safety protocols by putting other workers at risk for COVID-19 during a strike after he was told to self-quarantine. The dispute was fueled by a leaked note in which Amazon CEO David Zapolsky criticized Smalls for “not being clever or articulate,” for which Zapolsky later apologized.
Amazon defies timing of AG actions: The company’s lawsuit says James publicly condemned Smalls’s firing hours after it happened, without investigating. Later, the lawsuit says, the attorney general’s preliminary assessment against the company “failed to mention the New York City Sheriff’s Office findings that Amazon went ‘beyond’ applicable compliance requirements and that the complaints to the contrary they were ‘unfounded’ or facts favorable to Amazon ‘.
AG remedies: Amazon’s lawsuit says the attorney general has threatened to sue the company “if it does not immediately agree to a list of lawsuits, many of which have no health and safety connection and have no factual or legal basis.” According to Amazon’s lawsuit, those include:
Require Amazon to “pay back” profits, subsidize public bus service, and reduce its production speeds and performance requirements. Order the company to “pay large sums to Mr. Smalls and Mr. Palmer for ’emotional distress.’ “Have the company hire a health and safety consultant and adopt security policies that the company says it has already implemented.
Amazon’s response: “Amazon has already volunteered to provide a subsidized bus service to [New York Metropolitan Transit Authority], but the MTA rejected Amazon’s offer, ”the company says in its lawsuit. “Amazon has already modified its production speeds and throughput requirements to accommodate COVID-19 security measures. And Amazon has already hired some of the world’s leading experts to report on the company’s efforts to address the threat posed by COVID-19. “
Safety precautions: Much of Complaint from 64 Amazon pages details its COVID-19 response, including the creation of your own COVID-19 testing capabilities; the use of computer vision technology reinforce social distancing; and implementation of comprehensive health and safety measures in consultation with experts.
Big picture: The dispute comes amid broader scrutiny of Amazon’s distribution facilities and its push to expand its delivery network across the country.
Voting by mail started this week in an effort by workers to form a union at the company’s Bessemer, Alabama facility, the largest organizing drive the company has faced to date. Voting will conclude at the end of March. Amazon is increasingly expanding its distribution and fulfillment network to rural areas of the country, including drop stations for last-mile package delivery, which increasingly complement and potentially supplant UPS and the US Postal Service in more areas. Announcing your fourth quarter results Last week, including $ 7.2 billion in profit, more than double its profit a year ago, Amazon said it has increased the square footage of its fulfillment and logistics network by 50% in the last year.
Notable stats: At 857,388 square feet, Amazon’s $ 100 million The JFK8 logistics center in Staten Island is the equivalent of more than 15 soccer fields, with more than 5,000 workers, the company says in its suit, seeking to illustrate the limits you have reached to ensure the safety of workers in the huge facility.
The full Amazon lawsuit is available here.
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