An employee of an Amazon distribution platform in New York’s Staten Island district died of the coronavirus, the retail giant said on Tuesday, confirming information from The Verge.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of an employee at our Staten Island site,” a spokesperson told AFP.
The employee last visited the site, called JFK8, on April 5, and was not in contact with another employee who tested positive or who showed symptoms of the disease, Amazon said.
The group believes that none of the coronavirus cases seen among the warehouse workforce are directly linked to one another, which would mean that employees have all contracted the virus outside of their workplace.
Amazon has been repeatedly accused of failing to take the necessary steps to provide its employees with adequate protection against the spread of Covid-19.
Several work stoppages have been observed at various sites by employees who consider themselves insufficiently protected, notably on Staten Island.
In France, Amazon suspended the activity of its distribution centers until May 5 after a court decision required it to assess the risks of the spread of the coronavirus on its sites.
On Monday, a vice president of Amazon Web Services, the subsidiary dedicated to information systems, announced in an open letter his resignation to protest against what he considers repression within the group.
Tim Bray accuses Amazon of having immediately dismissed employees who had complained about their conditions or who had relayed the complaints of their colleagues.
The employee behind the demonstration on the Staten Island site was fired by Amazon, officially for non-compliance with containment.
“Amazon has invested heavily in measures to protect the health and safety of our employees,” said the group, ensuring that the rate of infection at the Staten Island site was significantly lower than that of the region.
Tim Bray said he had confirmation that the group had made significant investments to improve its protective device against the coronavirus.
“But at the end of the day, the big problem is not the management of the Covid-19,” he wrote, “but the fact that Amazon treats its warehouse workers as interchangeable modules. It’s not just Amazon, it’s the way 21st century capitalism works. “
06/05/2020 00:05:19 – New York (AFP) – © 2020 AFP
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