New York has officially filed a lawsuit against Amazon for poor precautions taken to keep their workers safe during the COVID 19 pandemic.
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New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, filed the lawsuit days after Amazon had filed against her saying that workplace safety is a federal matter, making it against her authority to sue the company. James had opened an investigation in March of 2020 focusing on two facilities, one in Staten Island and one in Queens, after complaints of the company taking little to no precaution for their employees amid the pandemic. At the time New York had the most COVID cases in the US.
James stated in the lawsuit that “throughout the historic pandemic, Amazon has repeatedly and persistently failed to comply with the obligation to institute reasonable and adequate measures to protect its workers from the spread of the virus in its New York facilities.”
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The facilities of Amazon have been accused of the failure to close down for proper cleaning after finding out that workers were infected by the virus. It is also said that workers who were in close contact with the infected were not notified about being exposed.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel responded to the lawsuit in a statement saying “We care deeply about the health and safety of our employees, as demonstrated in our filing last week, and we don’t believe the Attorney General’s filing presents an accurate picture of Amazon’s industry-leading response to the pandemic.”
Amazon was also under fire in late March of 2020 for terminating a warehouse worker. The termination came after the man had organized and participated in a warehouse walkout demanding greater COVID protections in the workplace. After months of complaints and many employee walkouts, Amazon had only started to take temperature screenings of employees.
