Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, photographed on September 13, 2018.
Bloomberg | fake pictures
The coronavirus pandemic has placed a great burden on e-commerce giants worldwide, but some appear to have treated it better than others.
Amazon has had Covid-19 related deaths, protests and lawsuits. Its closest China equivalents, Alibaba and JD.com, have had none of those.
While these expanding e-commerce giants are very different, they have all had to respond to the same virus.
China’s e-commerce giants were quick to take security measures, but Amazon was accused of having a slower response, with some calling its deposits “coronavirus breeding grounds.”
Both Alibaba and JD.com told CNBC that they have recorded zero warehouse worker deaths as a result of the virus, while Amazon has had at least eight.
Seattle-based company Jeff Bezos has created a Covid-19 blog where he posts daily updates on how he is responding to the crisis. It’s a long read, suggesting that Amazon is taking many steps to protect workers, customers, and the business itself.
But questions are still being asked and far fewer are being asked about Alibaba and JD.com’s response. However, that does not mean that everything is perfect. It’s harder to get a real picture of what’s going on behind the scenes of Chinese tech companies, as Chinese workers rarely speak out against their employers and Chinese firms aren’t scrutinized by the media as much as their Western counterparts.
Amazon struggled?
More than 50 Amazon “fulfillment centers” worldwide have seen coronavirus cases.
In March, a dozen Amazon warehouse workers told CNBC that they were terrified of going to work. “The workplace is crowded,” said Hibaq Mohamed, a warehouse worker who works at MSP1 in Minnesota. “I’m scared, but I can’t stop working without pay.”
The situation worsened so much in France that a French court ordered Amazon to close six warehouses across the country on April 6 to protect workers, and the facility was not allowed to reopen until mid-May.
Amazon warehouse workers in the US USA And Europe voiced its concerns in public protections, which Amazon cracked down on when laying off workers.
Last month, Amazon Vice President Tim Bray resigned “shocked” by the company’s crackdown. In a blog post, the Amazon Web Services engineer said the firing of protesters was evidence of “a streak of toxicity running through the company’s culture.”
Too little and too late?
Amazon says it has done everything possible to protect workers from the coronavirus. Temperature controls, disinfectant spraying, “improved” cleaning and social distancing have been introduced in warehouses, and workers receive protective masks to wear.
But some of these measures took weeks to implement, and many of them were implemented on Alibaba and JD.com shortly after learning of the virus.
Amazon has also introduced contact tracking systems in some warehouses to try to control the spread. However, three workers filed a lawsuit this month alleging the measures were inadequate and that Amazon “tried to create a compliance front.”
At the time, Amazon told CNBC in a statement that it has always followed the guidance of federal and local health authorities, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, its own experts in health and safety in the workplace and an independent epidemiologist.
Subsequently, the company announced that it is in the process of deploying cameras that issue an alert when workers do not adequately follow social distancing guidelines.
The evidence is also increasing. Amazon wants most of its warehouse workers to be tested every two weeks and is establishing its own testing labs within the warehouses themselves. Under the plans, reported by CNBC this month, the workers would assess themselves using an orientation video and a clinical professional would supervise.
Staffing
Amazon, Alibaba, and JD.com have embarked on aggressive hiring sprees as a result of the coronavirus, but Amazon is the one most people are looking for.
On March 17, Amazon announced that it was hiring 100,000 employees to help it deal with increasing online sales. Less than a month later, on April 13, he said he was hiring another 75,000 workers. The new recruits include a skydiver, a diving instructor, a speedway pilot and a pub owner, according to a promotional video posted on an Amazon blog.
All of these workers are meant to cost a lot. On April 30, Amazon said it hoped to spend its second-quarter profit of $ 4 billion to tackle the coronavirus.
Alibaba and JD.com have not announced plans to hire nearly as many new employees.
Jack Ma, CEO of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, speaks during his visit to the Vivatech startups and innovation fair in Paris on May 16, 2019.
Philippe Lopez | AFP | fake pictures
In mid-February, Alibaba’s online grocery store FreshHema announced that it planned to recruit 30,000 new employees in 2020, with roles distributed in purchasing, marketing, and delivery.
Meanwhile, JD.com, which had 180,000 logistics workers before the pandemic, announced plans to hire a little more.
On February 12, JD Logistics, a business group at JD.com, said it intended to recruit 20,000 front-line employees, including warehouse workers, pickers, couriers, and drivers. The local on-demand delivery platform supported by JD Dada Group offered another 15,000 emails.
As other companies collapsed, the world’s three largest e-commerce companies have seen their share prices rise since the start of the year. Amazon is now worth $ 1.36 trillion, while Alibaba is worth $ 610 billion and JD.com is worth $ 92 billion.
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