Amazon under the Microscope over Worker Treatment
Amazon has emerged as one company especially critical to its customer base during the Covid-19 outbreak. People from all over are relying on the retailer to deliver items to their doorsteps (and quickly) so they can avoid the headache and health threat that accompany braving brick and mortar stores in person.
In order for Amazon to deliver, though, its employees have shouldered risks as well, and they aren’t letting that fact go unnoticed, as protests and walkouts across the country have taken place in recent weeks.
Additionally, activist investors are putting pressure on the company to reveal more about the conditions and treatment of its workforce, a goal laid out even prior to the pandemic.
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The legal and regulatory battles potentially being presented would certainly rise to the level of the board, says Susan Bickley, labor and employment partner at Blank Rome.
Her law firm surveyed companies in mid-March and found that only 12% of companies said they had received employee complaints related to Covid-19, a number she expects would be sharply higher if the survey were done today, she said in an April 7 phone interview. Employee complaints ranged from the lack of work-from-home policies their employers have in place to the lack of hand sanitizer available to employees.
“Amazon under the Microscope over Worker Treatment,” by Stephanie Forshee, was published in Agenda Week on April 13, 2020.