Amazon workers at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse demanded that the facility be shut down and cleaned after an employee tested positive for coronavirus in New York on March 30, 2020.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images
A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit against Amazon alleging that the company failed to prevent the spread of coronavirus by creating unsafe working conditions and instead suspended the occupational safety and health administration.
Four employees on Staten Island, Amazon’s supply center in New York, filed a complaint in June. U.S. for the Eastern District of New York. The lawsuit, filed in district court, alleges that Amazon violated public nuisance and workplace safety laws by “intentionally abusing workers” and prioritizing productivity over safety costs.
Amazon warehouse workers have regularly criticized the company’s response to the epidemic over the past several months, saying they have failed to adequately protect them from the coronavirus. Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos have backed down on the allegations, saying the company has gone to “great lengths” to protect workers.
JFK8 activists claim that Amazon has failed to comply with public health guidelines surrounding coronaviruses, putting them and their family members at risk of becoming ill. Barbara Chandler was one of the plaintiffs in the cases confirmed in JBKK 8, according to the complaint. Chandler’s cousin, with whom he lived, died in April of coronavirus symptoms, the lawsuit said.
It also claimed that Amazon had violated New York labor laws by failing to pay “timely” coronavirus sick pay and violated its duty to maintain a safe workplace.
Judge Brian Cog dismissed the employees ‘claims, and adjourned the occupational safety and health administration in response to the workers’ request for a restraining order, which required Amazon to comply with public health standards.
“There is no doubt that keeping JFK8 completely shut down during an epidemic while continuing to pay employees and benefits would be the best protection against infectious workplace,” Cogan wrote in the ruling. “But one has to strike a balance between maintaining the performance of some levels in conjunction with several levels of protective measures.”
The workers’ claims and request for a restraining order are “at the center of OSHA’s expertise and discretion,” Cogan said.
Amazon has said it always adheres to public health guidelines around coronaviruses and provides employees with adequate personal protective equipment.
“Nothing is more important than the health and safety of our employees,” Amazon spokeswoman Lisa Lewandowski told CNBC in a statement.
Advocacy groups, including Towards Justice, Public Justice and Make the Road New York, called the court’s decision to sue workers jointly “disastrous” for Amazon employees and said they were weighing the appeal. It is not clear if JFK8 employees plan to file an OSHA complaint.
The decision “frees Amazon to have enough time to wash their hands at workstations, to fail to pay immediately for quarantine leave compared to some state laws, to do ‘contact tracing’, which is not the most basic steps in, and if they begin to experience symptoms or they believe they believe they should fail to communicate clearly to them about what to do, ”the groups added.
Early in the epidemic, Amazon’s Staten Island facility became a link to growing tensions between the company and warehouse employees. Activists from JFK 8 staged a protest in March demanding closure of the facility for additional cleaning. Amazon will then lead a public scrutiny after it fired Chris Small, the strike’s main organizer, for violating social distance rules.
Last month, Amazon announced that about 20,000 front-line employees had signed the Covid-19 between March 1 and September 19. The company said the rate of infection among employees was 42% lower than expected compared to the general population in the U.S.
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