Amazon tries to spread that warehouses are safe
KENT, Wash. — After months of being embattled over its response to the coronavirus, Amazon is working to convince the public that its workplaces — specifically, the warehouses where it stores everything from toys to hand sanitizer — are safe during the pandemic.
The giant internet retailer has started running television ads that show its warehouse and delivery employees have masks and other protective gear. It has pushed out segments to local news stations touting its safety improvements. It has asked journalists to visit its warehouses to see for themselves.
Amazon is spreading its safety message after a period that Jeff Bezos, the company’s chief executive, has called “the hardest time we’ve ever faced.” As the coronavirus swept through the United States, Amazon struggled to balance a surge of orders with the health concerns of the 1 million workers and contractors at its warehouses and delivery operations.
In hundreds of its facilities, workers became ill with COVID-19, and many blamed the company. At the height of its crisis, one Amazon executive said he quit over the firings of workers who had raised questions about workplace safety during the pandemic.
While Amazon has rolled out safety changes, many workers and officials said the measures were unevenly deployed and came too late.
But in recent weeks, workers said, some conditions inside the warehouses have improved.
One Kent, Wash., Amazon facility, which opened in 2016, stretches across more than 1 million square feet. The squat, largely windowless structure sits in an industrial park surrounded by parking lots. Inside, a vast web of conveyor belts crisscross the building, moving between areas where workers stow products into robotic shelves and areas where the workers pick items up from the shelves. There are also workstations where people package the items up for shipping.
On a typical shift, 600 to 800 employees work there. Much of the building naturally has little human interaction because the work areas are spaced far apart.
But some high-traffic areas have changed. The human resources desk has put up walls of plexiglass so people can still talk face to face, with a layer of separation. There is tape throughout the warehouse marking out 6-foot increments for social distancing. Sanitizer stations are common; before they were rare.
The most dramatic transformation is at the building’s entryway, a wide lobby area with tall turnstiles. Workers would previously pass through the turnstiles and start their shift. Now when they arrive, they are channeled past thermal cameras, manned by colleagues, to take their temperatures. At a small stand enclosed in plexiglass, a worker stands with a stack of masks, which are handed out using long tongs.
After workers pass through the temperature checks, they see a glasswalled room that previously was used for training. The room is part of an Amazon pilot program to test warehouse employees for COVID-19, part of the $4 billion that the company has said it plans to spend in the next few months to respond to the virus.