USA TODAY International Edition
Protesting Amazon worker fired as Whole Foods stoppage begins
Some employees at Whole Foods Market nationwide executed a work stoppage Tuesday, while a former employee at parent company Amazon considered legal action after his dismissal for participation in a labor walkout Monday.
Expect escalating tensions between employers and workers as workplaces deemed essential during the coronavirus crisis weigh issues of safety with pressures to meet the demands of a sheltering- in- place populace.
Amazon, which acquired the supermarket chain in June 2017 for $ 13.7 billion, is seeking to hire thousands of workers for both businesses. But workers for the supermarket chain want improved workplace safety and benefits including hazard pay and sick pay for employees who may be sick but haven’t been tested for the coronavirus.
Whole Foods workers had originally scheduled May 1, International Workers’ Day, as the date to stage a sickout, in which they call in to say the won’t come to work that day. But concerns about contracting and spreading the COVID- 19 virus between co- workers and customers led them to move up the daylong strike.
“Many cities and states have effectively shut down, making us literal emergency workers,” the group said in a statement. “The level of risk combined with the inflated profits from the past few weeks mean that us grocery sore workers need to be fairly compensated, as well as given an option to self- quarantine without fear of being evicted.”
The protest by some Whole Foods employees who “called out” to not report to work Tuesday had “no operational impact” and service continued at “all of our stores without interruption,” the company said in a statement to USA TODAY.
Whole Foods workers who planned to participate in the work stoppage talked to USA TODAY but asked that their names not be used because they feared
they would be fired.
The workers at Amazon, Whole Foods and Instacart – shoppers and deliverers for the online grocery service had their own strike on Monday – describe a work environment that can echo those in hospitals and health care facilities: not enough preventive equipment and sloppy safety precautions, a combination that could contribute to the virus’ spread.
“We are having nurses and physicians and others working in an environment where don’t feel like they have the necessary equipment to take care of patients the way they have been trained to take care of them and to also protect themselves,” said Sally Watkins, executive director of the Washington State Nurses Association.
The association filed a complaint with the state labor department over unsafe work conditions at a hospital in Bellingham, Washington, and had criticized the firing of emergency room physician Dr. Ming Lin who was fired after he voiced similar concerns on Facebook and in The Seattle Times.
Similarly, New York Attorney General Letitia James is calling for a National Labor Relations Board investigation into the firing of worker Christian Smalls, who had organized Monday’s protest at an Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island, New York.
“It is disgraceful that Amazon would terminate an employee who bravely stood up to protect himself and his colleagues. At the height of a global pandemic, Chris Smalls and his colleagues publicly protested the lack of precautions that Amazon was taking to protect them from COVID- 19,” she said in a statement.
Workers had demanded the building be sanitized after several workers tested positive for the virus, Smalls told USA TODAY.
On his Twitter feed, Smalls said he after he was sent home Saturday other employees who were in direct contact with an employee who tested positive were not. He is reportedly considering legal action against Amazon, he told USA TODAY.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday that he has directed the city’s human rights commission to investigate the incident. “The commission has opened an investigation to determine whether Amazon has violated the New York City human rights law,” said commission spokesperson Alicia McCauley.
Meanwhile, Whole Foods workers say they want improved sanitation and physical distancing between workers and between workers and customers at stores. They are also seeking double- time wages for hazard pay and sick pay for workers who isolate instead of coming to work.
Those who participated in Tuesday’s protest were “a small but vocal group” of employees, Whole Foods said. The company has taken “extensive measures” to protect its workers and increased pay and new safety protocols include daily temperature screenings of employees, it says.