In June, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island filed a complaint against their employer citing myriad safety concerns related to Covid-19 and Amazon’s failure to protect workers adequately. Specifically, workers were required to increase their productivity to fulfill the massive number of orders coming from the still-employed stuck at home under lockdown orders. This demand required workers to violate social distancing requirements and hinder their ability to perform basic sanitary measures, such as frequent hand-sanitizing.
In addition to asking that they be able to work at a slower pace without employer retribution, workers also argued that Amazon should be required to allow workers to access their paid time off even if it had not accrued yet.
Unique in this case was the approach the workers and their legal representatives took to the suit. They argued not only that Amazon had “breached its duty to provide workplace safety,” but that Amazon’s failure to provide protections to workers could be construed as a “public nuisance.” However, as Law360 reports, a federal judge in New York has rejected the lawsuit, ruling that OSHA, not courts, should determine what constitutes workplace safety and safe practices.
As we have reported on recently, OSHA has failed, monumentally, to provide any comprehensive guidance regarding workplace safety during the pandemic and is being sued by a coalition of unions representing healthcare and public sector workers. Such sentiments were echoed by worker representatives who stated, “The court's deference to the Occupational Safety & Health Administration should be very concerning to anyone who cares about the health of American workers, given that it has been virtually AWOL throughout this crisis.”
Meanwhile, Amazon has seen record profits since the beginning of the pandemic while it has simultaneously continued its purges of workers attempting to organize warehouse workers and other employees at the company as well as increasing its internal efforts to monitor and track organizers.
