Amazon workers to strike at New York site over COVID-19 concerns

About 100 Amazon.com Inc. employees at a New York fulfilment center plan to go on strike at noon on Monday, alleging management has been unresponsive to safety concerns and the spread of the coronavirus at the facility. Employees are demanding that the Staten Island site be closed for at least two weeks and sanitized. The e-commerce giant closed a warehouse in Queens for cleaning after an employee tested positive, as reported by The Atlantic.

In addition, they’re asking for workers to be paid during this time, as well as retroactively compensating those who had already stayed home out of fears for their health and safety.Chris Smalls, a management assistant at the site known as JFK8 and lead organizer of the strike, has worked at Amazon for five years at three buildings in the New York tri-state area. Colleagues began falling ill after Amazon managers came back from a trip to Seattle, Washington, the initial epicenter of the virus in the US, according to Smalls.

He left work in the second week of March out of concern for his health. Smalls returned last week to rally support for a work stoppage among the building’s 4,500 employees and reiterate his concerns and recommendations to management.