Amazon’s safety measures and labor practices during the coronavirus pandemic are being investigated by New York’s top law enforcement officer after the company fired the leader of a Staten Island warehouse walkout.
New York Attorney General Letitia James told Amazon in an letter sent Wednesday that the state is looking into whether the company violated federal employment law or ran afoul of state whistleblower protections by dismissing the worker, Chris Smalls, her spokesperson confirmed on Monday.
James’ preliminary finding is that Amazon may have fired Smalls to silence him and that the working conditions at the facility may have violated provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the spokesperson said. The letter was obtained and reported first by National Public Radio.
The attorney general’s office declined to comment further. Last month, James called Smalls’ firing “immoral and inhumane.” Her deputy labor bureau chief tweeted the NPR report Monday night.
At the end of March, a group of workers at the Staten Island fulfillment center walked off the job and demanded that Amazon close the facility for extended cleaning. They said a number of their colleagues were diagnosed with covid-19, the disease the novel coronavirus causes. Seattle-based Amazon said at the time that Smalls violated safety regulations, including not abiding by a 14-day quarantine required after being exposed to an employee with a confirmed case of the disease.
Amazon said it’s taken “extreme measures” to keep its employees safe, including increasing time off and pay.
“We encourage anyone to compare the health and safety measures Amazon has taken, and the speed of their implementation, during this crisis with other retailers,” Lisa Levandowski, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement.
(c) 2020, Bloomberg · Erik Larson
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Keep it Amazon! We couldn’t have managed this pandemic quarantine life without your dedicated services. Ignore the stupid government investigation.
What are the parameters of this vague rule of “whistle blowing”? Is walking off a job “whistle blowing”? (I am here in Canada, so I don’t know how you guys in the US do things – do you guys know how you do things?) Is there a government department that must be informed by the “whistelblower”? The web notes the following with regards to New York specifically:
> New York is an “at will” employment state. This means employees may be fired at any time for any reason.
However, exceptions include: employees will be protected from retaliatory discharge if they refuse to participate in the illegal activity posing a substantial risk to public health and safety.
So is this walkout a public safety issue or an employee (not public) safety issue which requires reporting to the appropriate authority?