New York sues Amazon, alleging coronavirus safety failures and protest retaliations

Last week Amazon sued New York Attorney General Letitia James, a pre-emptive strike aimed at stopping her from suing the company over its allegedly poor coronavirus safety measures. Unfortunately for Jeff Bezos' monster, its cunning plan to cut off the legal action at its knees didn't work.

In a suit filed Tuesday to the New York Supreme Court, James alleges Amazon violated several of the state's labor laws, including anti-retaliation and whistleblower protection laws. More specifically, James accuses Amazon of failing to take adequate measures to protect its workers from the coronavirus pandemic, and punishing any workers who spoke up or voiced criticism.

"Throughout this pandemic, Amazon employees have been forced to work in unsafe conditions, all while the company and its CEO made billions off of their backs," James said in response to Amazon's initial lawsuit last week. "This action by Amazon is nothing more than a sad attempt to distract from the facts and shirk accountability for its failures to protect hardworking employees from a deadly virus."

According to James' suit, which was brought on behalf of the people of New York, Amazon failed to follow coronavirus cleaning requirements, identify and notify potential contacts of infected workers, or alter productivity rates to ensure employees were able to safely social-distance and sanitise. These violations allegedly occurred both in a fulfilment center on Staten Island and a distribution center in Queens.

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"Amazon’s flagrant disregard for health and safety requirements has threatened serious illness and grave harm to the thousands of workers in these facilities and poses a continued substantial and specific danger to the public health," reads the suit.

The lawsuit also seeks damages for Amazon's alleged retaliation against two workers from its Staten Island facility, Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer. Both outspoken critics of Amazon's purportedly inadequate coronavirus safety measures, Smalls was fired in March 2020 while Palmer was issued a written warning in April 2020. Both Smalls and Palmer had good work records prior to these incidents.

"Following Amazon’s discharge of Smalls and issuance of a final written warning to Palmer, Amazon employees reasonably fear that if they make legitimate health and safety complaints about Amazon’s COVID-19 response, Amazon will retaliate against them as well," the lawsuit reads.

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Smalls was let go after attending a protest in the parking lot of his workplace to draw attention to the company's allegedly inadequate health and safety measures. According to the lawsuit Smalls was told he was being fired for violating Amazon's quarantine order, however he had not been told that this order barred him from standing outside the company's facilities.

In May of 2020, protesters convened outside of a New York fulfillment center in Staten Island to speak out against working conditions. Credit: Stephanie Keith / getty

Palmer was issued a final written warning for violating social distancing policies after he repeatedly expressed concern about Amazon's coronavirus safety measures to his managers. But he was not issued any warnings prior to this, either written or unwritten — meaning the company bypassed less severe options that had been taken in similar situations.

In addition to Smalls' reinstatement, the retraction of Palmer's warning, and backpay and damages for both, James' suit requests the court require Amazon to notify its employees of their rights under New York Labor Law, as well as train them in those rights.

"Amazon has cut corners in complying with the particular requirements that would most jeopardize its sales volume and productivity rates, thereby ensuring outsize profits at an unprecedented rate of growth for the company and its shareholders," the lawsuit claims. "Over the course of the pandemic, Amazon netted more $130 billion in profits from online sales — representing 35% growth from its pre-pandemic earnings and a 10% higher growth rate than in prior years — at the expense of its frontline workers who have experienced significant risks of COVID-19 infection while working at Amazon."

Amazon responded to Mashable's request for comment. "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," said Kelly Nantel, ‎Amazon spokesperson, in an emailed statement.

Another Amazon spokesperson further disputed the figures given in James' lawsuit, telling Mashable that Amazon's global profit in 2020 was $22.9 billion.

Amazon workers around the world staged protests on Black Friday last year to object to the company's approach to worker safety, as well as anti-union practices and climate impact. Earlier in 2020, Amazon fired two non-warehouse employees for speaking out about warehouse conditions during the pandemic, prompting a VP at the company to resign "in dismay".

As of October last year, nearly 20,000 Amazon workers had tested positive to coronavirus.

UPDATE: Feb. 17, 2021, 1:40 p.m. GMT This story has been updated with Amazon's statement.

UPDATE: Feb. 17, 2021, 1:26 p.m. PST This story has been updated with Amazon's further statement disputing the figures given the lawsuit.