May 4, 2020-Despite surging sales, Amazon.com faces a critical time as its workers around the world raise safety concerns and as one of its top executives resigns due to “toxicity running through the company culture.”
Tim Bray left his position as a vice-president at Amazon Web Services May 1 in protest over the company’s treatment of workers who complained about unsafe warehouse conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bray said that although the decision to leave would cost him over a million dollars “not to mention the best job” he’s ever had, he could no longer support power imbalances between workers and executives.
In a blog post, Bray said Amazon.com executives fired two high-profile activists who had promoted a petition and organized a video call on behalf of warehouse workers. Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa had sent an announcement about the video call to workers around the world using an internal mailing list, Bray said.
Bray said executives had other options.
“Management could have objected to the event, or demanded that outsiders be excluded, or that leadership be represented, or any number of other things; there was plenty of time. Instead, they just fired the activists,” he wrote.
Global Push-Back
Amazon faces scrutiny, not only from workers, but also governments around the world and attorney generals in the United States. In France, for instance, the government ordered the firm to only ship essential items. Furthermore, it said Amazon would need to conduct a safety assessment in its six warehouses in France and consult with unions to ensure health measures were adequate.
Petitioners’ Demands
In the workers’ petition, they had asked for paid sick leave to all workers without proof of a coronavirus diagnosis, subsidies for childcare, hazard pay worth 1.5 times to current amount, reprieve from write-ups and closures of facilities in places where a worker tests positive for the virus.
Company Actions
In an April 30 release, Amazon outlined the steps it is taking to protect its workers. The company said it made over 150 process changes to protect workers. That includes purchasing 100 million face masks, 1,000 thermal camera and 31,000 thermometers and testing workers.
Workers As ‘Fungible Units’
As for Bray, his concerns about the company culture extend beyond thecurrent COVID-19 environment. He praised the company for spotting opportunities, building repeatable processes and managing them. At the same time, he criticized the company for treating workers like “fungible units of pick-and-pack potential” in an era of “21st-century capitalism.
He said the last straw for him was when the company fired the workers who spoke up.
“Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets,” Bray said. “It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.”
Surging Sales
The turmoil in the company comes as consumers increasingly turn to online shopping amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Worldwide, Amazon has 175 fulfillment centers.
Company sales surged in the first quarter. Amazon announced April 30 that its first-quarter net sales for 2020 increased by 26 percent. Compared with its sales in the same quarter in 2019, first-quarter sales jumped to $75.5 billion from $59.7 billion. Meanwhile, costs increased too, as the company managed lease obligations and forecast a $4 billion expense of dealing with COVID-19.
“From online shopping to AWS to Prime Video and Fire TV, the current crisis is demonstrating the adaptability and durability of Amazon’s business as never before, but it’s also the hardest time we’ve ever faced,” Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in a company release. “Providing for customers and protecting employees as this crisis continues for more months is going to take skill, humility, invention, and money.”
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