Gaps seen in Amazon’s response to virus
Outbreak spreads to over 50 facilities
SEATTLE — Jonathan Bailey, a 30-year-old Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, has a system for protecting himself from the coronavirus at work. He wears a medical mask with a bandanna tied over it. When he returns to the apartment he shares with his wife, he dumps his mask, work gloves, neon green Amazon safety vest and other clothes into a plastic trash bag.
He’s not certain it really works, but he figures it’s better than nothing.
“We’re very careful,” Mr. Bailey said. “We’re in the epicenter of it all.”
As millions of Americans heed government orders to hunker down, ordering food and medicines and books and puzzle boards for home delivery, many of Amazon’s 400,000 warehouse workers have stayed on the job, fulfilling the crushing demands of a country suddenly working and learning from home. Orders for Amazon groceries, for example, have been as much as 50 times higher than normal, according to a person with direct knowledge of the business.
The challenge is keeping enough people on the job to fill those orders, according to more than 30 Amazon warehouse workers and current and former corporate employees who spoke with The New York Times. Many requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and feared losing their jobs.
For all of its high-tech sophistication, Amazon’s vast e-commerce business is dependent on an army of workers operating in warehouses they now fear are contaminated with the coronavirus.
“None of this works without our employees,” said Jay Carney, the company’s senior vice president for corporate affairs.
And the employees have been motivated to remind Amazon of their importance.
The surge of orders is testing the limits of Amazon’s vaunted distribution system and forcing changes to the company’s relationship with its employees. While Amazon’s workers are not unionized, the crisis has given workplace organizers like Mr. Bailey unexpected leverage to demand better pay, better sick leave and more of a voice in how the company is run.
By mid-March, attendance at Amazon warehouses had fallen as much as 30%, according to one corporate employee involved in the response. This past week, small groups of employees protested working conditions in Michigan and New York. New York state and New York City officials also said they were investigating whether Amazon improperly retaliated against a worker it fired who had been involved in the protest.
Amazon said it did not fire employees for speaking out about their workplace conditions and that it had fired the worker because he was on paid quarantine and violated safety measures by going to the protest. But in a leaked memo published Thursday by Vice, Amazon’s top lawyer called the fired worker inarticulate and discussed a strategy for making him out to be the face of the worker movement.
David Zapolsky, the general counsel, said he had been frustrated by what he called a safety violation.
Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Sens. Bob Menendez and Cory Booker, both of New Jersey, recently wrote to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to express concern about warehouse safety. The senators, all Democrats, condemned Mr. Zapolsky’s remarks in statements to the Times.
“It’s troubling, racist and has no place in our country,” Mr. Menendez said. “Amazon should do everything it can to protect its workers instead of disparaging them.”
Amazon said that at the time he made the comments, Mr. Zapolsky was not aware that the fired worker was black.
Amazon’s response to the pandemic has differed from warehouse to warehouse. Over the years, that sort of autonomy has allowed Amazon to nimbly adjust to local market conditions. Now it is leading to distrust, as workers see some facilities close for cleaning while others remain open.
Since the first worker in the New York City facility learned March 18 that he had tested positive, the company has learned of cases in more than 50 other facilities, out of the more than 500 it operates across the county.
In recent weeks, Amazon has raised wages and added quarantine leave, and it is offering overtime at double pay. It said it had tripled its janitorial staff. And it has added space between many workstations.
But in private groups, conversations with their managers and public protests, some workers have expressed alarm about their safety.
But some warehouses acted more rapidly on the policies than others.
On Thursday, Amazon announced that it would audit warehouses’ compliance with the rules.
‘You won’t lose your job, don’t worry’
In the first week of March, Amazon told its headquarters employees to work from home. Warehouse employees were later offered unlimited unpaid time off instead. Workers would normally be fired after missing too many shifts, so Mr. Carney said the message that executives hoped to convey with the new policy was, “You won’t lose your job, don’t worry.”
Many workers did stay home, just as panic buying set in — first for masks and hand sanitizer, then toilet paper and eventually webcams. Eric Heller, a former Amazon senior manager who advises major brands at Wunderman Thompson Commerce, said his clients saw canned meat sales rise 700%. Pet food went up 300%.
Companies began sending in products to restock Amazon’s warehouses. But with attendance down and more items coming in, workers could not replenish the supplies fast enough. Trucks backed up, waiting days to be unloaded. The company offered shift after extra shift, raised wages by $2 an hour and paid double the hourly rate for overtime. It eventually announced that it would hire 100,000 new workers.