NEW YORK (AP) – Jana Jumpp spends eight hours a day updating a spreadsheet, not for work, but for a recent hobby: discovering how many of Amazon’s 400,000 warehouse workers have become ill with the coronavirus.
Amazon won’t give out a number, so Jumpp tracks it alone and shares what it finds with others. She trusts Amazon employees at more than 250 facilities that call, text, or Facebook with possible cases. She asks for evidence, such as messages or voicemails from Amazon, and tries to make sure it doesn’t count the same case twice.
It takes a long time, but Jumpp says workers need to know if there is an outbreak and how risky it is to go to work.
“Amazon isn’t going to do it, so it’s up to us,” says Jumpp, 58, who lost his job in July at an Amazon warehouse in Jeffersonville, Indiana, after he went on vacation for fear of catching the coronavirus and ran out of it. of paid time off.
Major companies keep their employees in the dark about how prevalent the virus is in their warehouses, stores, and meat packing plants. That has left workers like Jumpp to become amateur detectives in their spare time. Unions and advocacy groups have also addressed the cause, creating lists or building online maps of stores where workers can self-report cases they know of.
The numbers are published by unions and labor groups and are used to organize protests by workers. But mainly, the reason for collecting them is so that workers can make decisions about their health.
No names are included, and those who track say their numbers probably reflect far fewer cases than there actually are. Companies typically notify employees if a coworker has exposed them to the virus, but critics say they won’t disclose the totals because they could scare workers and fire customers.
Marc Perrone, president of the United International Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents supermarket workers and meat packers, called it “surprising” that during these pandemic months “some of the largest companies in the United States still refuse to disclose this information. ”
Companies have no legal obligation to publicly disclose how many of their workers have contracted the virus, and few are.
Employers must provide a safe work environment, which means they must alert staff if they may have been exposed to the virus without revealing the name of the person who tested positive, in accordance with Federal Health and Safety Administration guidelines. Occupational, the federal agency that enforces job security. They are also required to track COVID-19 infections contracted at work and must report to OSHA if there is a hospitalization or death related to the disease.
Companies can’t “consciously ignore” the possibility of their workers getting sick on the job and keep that information from the government, says Aaron Holt, an employment attorney at Cozen O’Connor.
“Overall, in my experience, the customers I’m talking to are doing the best they can, but it’s an imperfect picture,” he says.
In the absence of full transparency, the UFCW has asked local unions to keep a record of members who became ill or died. According to her count, more than 25,000 people have been infected or exposed to the virus in supermarkets and meat packing plants; Approximately 150 have died.
United for Respect, a labor group, collects anonymous reports from workers at Walmart and Amazon through a new website. So far, they have received reports of more than 800 cases at Walmart and more than 1,760 in Amazon stores, although the group has only been able to independently verify a fraction of the cases.
“It really is about Walmart employees intervening where managers are failing,” says Cindi Murray, a member of United for Respect, who works at Walmart in Laurel, Maryland.
Walmart said its COVID-19 cases keep track of the rest of the country, but did not explain why it does not provide numbers. He noted that he has temporarily closed some stores for testing as well as for additional cleaning and disinfection.
Faced with pressure, some companies offer a look at their numbers. Tyson Foods, the meat processing company that has had multiple outbreaks and was sued by the families of three workers who died after contracting the coronavirus at an Iowa meat plant, is testing workers at some of his plants and posting the results on his website. The company says that about a third of its workforce, or about 40,000 people, have been evaluated.
Other companies keep the numbers close, even when pressed by politicians or state officials. When Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker asked meat processor Smithfield to release the number of workers who fell ill, the company responded in a June letter: “Employees should never be reduced to numbers; even a loss marks our hearts. “
In May, attorneys general in a dozen states asked Amazon for a state breakdown of COVID-19 cases and deaths at its warehouses and Whole Foods supermarkets. Amazon did not provide the numbers, according to the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, and did not explain why when asked by The Associated Press. But in a May interview with “60 Minutes,” Amazon executive David Clark said the case totals are not “a particularly useful number.”
Jumpp began tracking COVID-19 diseases in March, concerned about the growing cases and his own health. When I started the follow-up project, I would receive about five new cases per day. But then it quickly increased to 20.
Amazon notifies workers through text messages or robotic calls if there has been a case of coronavirus at your location. At first, the company provided numbers, but now it will only say whether there has been an “additional case.” Jumpp counts that as one. If Amazon says there have been “additional cases,” count that as two, an imperfect system that is likely to lead to an undercount. According to Jumpp’s count, there have been more than 1,600 cases in Amazon warehouses. At least one other worker has counted 1,500 cases.
Inspired by warehouse workers, Katie Doan began tracking cases on Amazon-owned Whole Foods in April, searching Reddit, Twitter, and news articles when she wasn’t storing shelves at Whole Foods in Testin, California. Some workers submitted tips through the Telegram messaging app.
In late May, Doan was fired from Whole Foods. They told her it was because she left the job for 45 minutes due to a panic attack, but she believes that her candor played an important role. Whole Foods says leaving her position was the only reason for her dismissal.
Although she no longer works there, the 25-year-old journalism student continues to track cases at Whole Foods, which she says has exceeded 630.
“I am reporting something that needs to be published,” she says.
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