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> ...he might have caught the virus while in an Amazon warehouse, therefore Amazon's a jerk. from tfa: He wants to know why Amazon isn’t being more transparen

> ...he might have caught the virus while in an Amazon warehouse, therefore Amazon's a jerk. from tfa: He wants to know why Amazon isn’t being more transparent with its workers and the public. The company’s official policy states that it informs all employees who have come in contact with an infected worker, but Amazon refuses to release official numbers of cases or deaths among its workforce. Reached for comment, Amazon said that it never received confirmation that Sentoso’s death was linked to COVID-19, so it did not send out a mass notification, and only informed his coworkers verbally of his passing. ... Once the results, which have been reviewed by The Times, came in, Evan says he tried calling Amazon twice to inform the company, but was never called back. Soon after, Evan’s family retained a lawyer to file a worker’s compensation claim with the state, which listed coronavirus as his father’s cause of death. He wants to know why the company was planning to stop allowing workers to take unlimited unpaid time off if they’re afraid to go in to work, and why Amazon is ending its $2 pay bump for workers if the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. shows few signs of slowing down. ... Hundreds of workers at Amazon’s facilities in Hawthorne and Eastvale, in Riverside County, have signed and submitted petitions asking the company to close the facilities for two weeks after infections for thorough cleaning and send workers home with quarantine pay. Following worker complaints compiled by the Warehouse Workers Resource Center, Cal OSHA has also launched investigations into both facilities.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The article certainly lists a lot of things the author wants Amazon to do, but it's always possible to list more things a company could be doing. The question is whether it's doing enough - whether its current policies have caused a bunch of otherwise avoidable deaths. Among your examples, unlimited unpaid time off and $2/hour permanently particularly stick out to me; those are clearly more about making workers happy than protecting them from the virus.
DangerousPie 6y ago
> The company’s official policy states that it informs all employees who have come in contact with an infected worker, but Amazon refuses to release official numbers of cases or deaths among its workforce. Classic shady article writing move: Join two unrelated statements together with a "but" to make them sound related. What's the connection between Amazon not publicly releasing numbers of cases and deaths among its workforce (what other employer does that?) and them informing employees who have been in contact with confirmed cases of the disease? > He wants to know why the company was planning to stop allowing workers to take unlimited unpaid time off if they’re afraid to go in to work Again, how many other employer do that?! Certainly not mine. > asking the company to close the facilities for two weeks after infections for thorough cleaning and send workers home with quarantine pay. What's the scientific basis for spending 2 weeks decontaminating a whole warehouse because of one infected case when it looks like >80% of infections occur through droplets or aerosols? How would that not result in a massive loss of warehouse capacity given the prevalence of cases and the number of workers in an average one. And again, nobody else does that either.
chkaloon 6y ago
Exactly. That's the key section of the article. Tough to defend that

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

The article certainly lists a lot of things the author wants Amazon to do, but it's always possible to list more things a company could be doing. The question is whether it's doing enough - whether its current policies have caused a bunch of otherwise avoidable deaths. Among your examples, unlimited unpaid time off and $2/hour permanently particularly stick out to me; those are clearly more about making workers happy than protecting them from the virus.

DangerousPie 6y ago

> The company’s official policy states that it informs all employees who have come in contact with an infected worker, but Amazon refuses to release official numbers of cases or deaths among its workforce. Classic shady article writing move: Join two unrelated statements together with a "but" to make them sound related. What's the connection between Amazon not publicly releasing numbers of cases and deaths among its workforce (what other employer does that?) and them informing employees who have been in contact with confirmed cases of the disease? > He wants to know why the company was planning to stop allowing workers to take unlimited unpaid time off if they’re afraid to go in to work Again, how many other employer do that?! Certainly not mine. > asking the company to close the facilities for two weeks after infections for thorough cleaning and send workers home with quarantine pay. What's the scientific basis for spending 2 weeks decontaminating a whole warehouse because of one infected case when it looks like >80% of infections occur through droplets or aerosols? How would that not result in a massive loss of warehouse capacity given the prevalence of cases and the number of workers in an average one. And again, nobody else does that either.

chkaloon 6y ago

Exactly. That's the key section of the article. Tough to defend that