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New York Sues Amazon, Saying It Inadequately Protected Workers From Covid-19 (nytimes.com) 138

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
New York's attorney general, Letitia James, sued Amazon on Tuesday evening, arguing that the company provided inadequate safety protection for workers in New York City during the pandemic and retaliated against employees who raised concerns over the conditions. From a report: The case focuses on two Amazon facilities: a large warehouse on Staten Island and a delivery depot in Queens. Ms. James argues that Amazon failed to properly clean its buildings, conducted inadequate contact tracing for known Covid-19 cases, and "took swift retaliatory action" to silence complaints from workers. "Amazon's extreme profits and exponential growth rate came at the expense of the lives, health and safety of its frontline workers," Ms. James argued in the complaint, filed in New York Supreme Court. Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said the company cared "deeply about the health and safety" of its workers. "We don't believe the attorney general's filing presents an accurate picture of Amazon's industry-leading response to the pandemic," Ms. Nantel said. Last week, Amazon preemptively sued Ms. James in federal court in an attempt to stop her from bringing the charges. The company argued that workplace safety was a matter of federal, not state, law.
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New York Sues Amazon, Saying It Inadequately Protected Workers From Covid-19 More

New York Sues Amazon, Saying It Inadequately Protected Workers From Covid-19

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  • Meanwhile in NY (Score:4, Insightful)

    by unixcorn ( 120825 ) on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:15AM (#61072002)

    If I remember correctly, the person who was fired was trespassing in order to protest after he had been asked to quarantine at home. Like every other company, Amazon navigated the pandemic as best it could. Now, if Ms. James really wants to go after a big fish for killing people with covid, she should start with her governor.

    • Re:Meanwhile in NY (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:30AM (#61072066)

      Well the governor is getting a lot of pressure at the moment. However it was less around safety concerns but how some data was reported. Mostly around Nursing Home Deaths vs Hospital Deaths of Covid-19. Which had the effect of making Nursing homes seems safer than they really were. This is indeed bad, however it wasn't a lie, as the nursing home patents were often sent to the hospital where they had died, so it was categorized as a hospital death.
      However what ever the numbers were, that wouldn't excuse nursing homes who have a bad rap of treating their patients rather poorly, even in best of times, for making the environment unsafe for them. So what the governor was wrong, in the big picture, but technically it was true. He is getting a lot of pressure at the moment for that.
      However...
      A GOVERNMENT CAN DO MORE THAN 1 THING AT A TIME!
      I am sick of these posts, why are they fixing this problem that I personally don't care about, while there is a problem that I do care about. They can in fact, both investigate the governor for any misdeeds and sue Amazon for its misdeeds as well. The Attorney General has a staff of lawyers and others, just so they can handle multiple problems at once.

      • he hid the numbers because he was afraid Trump would use bad numbers as an excuse to pull funding. That said, he's a cheap bastard, NY has enough money to risk it, and he was also pulling back state Medicaid funding. In a pandemic.

        Coumo was a Republican not long ago and it shows. Throughout this entire process money's been on his mind first and foremost. He should be voted out in the next round.

        • Re:Coumo handled it wrong (Score:4, Informative)

          by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @12:44PM (#61072352)

          Coumo is a democrat. He has been one. However he does have a history of working and supporting the Republican Senate Members (who were in a majority for a long time)

          However a North East Republican is similar to a Southern Democrat. While they will vote with their party on big cases, they are rather moderate and are more apt to work across the board.

          Coumo, doesn't have the luxury to be too liberal for all of New York State. Upstate NY is much more conservative, and have to deal with a lot of rural problems, combined with metropolis problems.

          But Trump liked to target Blue States, and try to hurt them, because they didn't like him. This meant that Coumo who needed federal assistance needed to walk a fine line. I think he had crossed it, as he should had showed the real numbers, but New York was the first state to get hit really hard, before we had treatment, or even social guidelines on what do to. So he was really in a no win situation, that was artificially created by Trump.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by guruevi ( 827432 )

            Man, what kind of cognitive dissonant world do you live in. Cuomo and the majority of NY government is Democrat. There are perhaps 2 House members from NY that are Republicans. California is in the same boat, what excuses do you want to make over there?

            Democrats are the party of the KKK and Jim Crow, Republicans are the party of Lincoln and MLK, the parties didn't exchange their platforms suddenly in 1965, the Democrats actively fought against the various equality acts and to date are still fighting against

            • Re:Coumo handled it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

              by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @02:05PM (#61072694) Journal
              Democrats are the party of the KKK and Jim Crow, Republicans are the party of Lincoln and MLK,

              The word you're looking for is 'were', as in, the Democrats were the party of the KKK and Jim Crow and Republicans were the party of Lincoln (though in name only).

              Now, Republicans embrace and make excuses for their KKK backings and outright go about trying to push through Jim Crow laws disguised as "preventing vote fraud" even though they can't come up with any examples of such fraud other than coming from their own party. And this doesn't even get into the whole, "You must do what the party says [usatoday.com]" schtick.

              So while you are correct about where things came from, it is quite obvious to even a blind man which party has progressed and which has regressed.

              For the record, James Madison would be considered a Republican since he and Jefferson had the same political leanings. However, if he were to run today he'd be lambasted for his acts to prevent churches from receiving any government aid [baptiststudiesonline.com] because it violates the First Amendment's separation of Church and State, unlike what Republicans did for Joel Osteen [snopes.com].

            • Republicans are the party of Lincoln

              Ah, the famous Confederate-flag-waving Lincoln. I'm sure it sounded better in your head.

              • To democrats brave enough to post anything but cat videos, The events at Ford Theater were obviously faked on a soundstage in Utah by the Koch brothers.

                The birth a party is important no matter how much people of the other party want to cast shade. What started in Rippon, WI as a party of liberation gets a lot of shade from people who have no idea what the first 100 years of the Republican Party was about.
                   
          • The numbers in question here are a direct result of Cuomo's policy of sending covid positive people into nursing homes... There's a reason NY's numbers are the worst in the country, and it's because he made a decision that led directly to the deaths of 10's of thousands of people. He doesn't just need to be voted out - he needs to be sent to prison.

          • Translation: "He's no TRUE Scotsman".

      • However it was less around safety concerns but how some data was reported.

        Really? Issuing a directive forcing nursing homes to accept positive COVID patients, in order to keep those patients out of the hospitals, isn't a safety concern? This literally resulted in seeding nursing homes with COVID. The reporting of data was to cover up and offset the explosion of COVID nursing home patients which were a direct result of the orders he issued .

        https://skillednursingnews.com... [skillednursingnews.com]

        No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.

        Emphasis is not mine - the governor's order underlined that text to make it totally clear that nursing hom

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You've got to be kidding. He is playing games with the numbers to hide how many deaths his idiotic orders are responsible for. 'Not safety related' - what have you been smoking?

      • From CNN:

        New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been pleading with lawmakers for support and even threatening political retribution against Democrats who have criticized him in an aggressive effort to contain political fallout from revelations that his administration had concealed the full extent of nursing home-related deaths during the Covid pandemic. Describing an alleged exchange with the governor that has not been previously reported, Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim told CNN that he received a call on

    • Re:Meanwhile in NY (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:43AM (#61072118) Homepage Journal

      That has little to do with this lawsuit. Have a read of it, the specific allegations are numerous and detailed:

      https://iapps.courts.state.ny.... [state.ny.us]

      Presumably they have evidence that substantiates these claims, such as Amazon's failure to properly contact trace or clean areas used by infected staff. The secret performance metrics they use, which staff have no access to, created a climate of fear where taking proper precautions was seen as risky due to the perceived (and likely real) effect they would have on stats.

      It's pretty clear that if these allegations are true then Amazon put profit before its staff's health in multiple ways and on multiple occasions.

      • Nobody can really pull off effective contact tracing. The CDC has (still) not provided information useful to businesses in order to manage aerosol transmission.

        Amazon wanted to continue to operate. Millions of Americans than them for that, as it was effectively the only source for many things for several weeks and months early in the pandemic.

        Given all this, the bar should be gross negligence, and I am yet to see evidence that Amazon came close to that threshold.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It's nonsense though. My partner works at Amazon and like you I believed all the shit in the news, but unfortunately it's just that, shit.

        The fact is:
        - Amazon pays to test all it's workers weekly for COVID-19, more than almost any other employer bar those in healthcare

        - Amazon sends you home the second you test positive on full pay

        - Amazon pays above the living wage, it's average salary hence being significantly above that of it's competitors

        - A large part of the problem is the staff themselves, it's hard t

    • Re:Meanwhile in NY (Score:5, Informative)

      by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian.bixby@gmail . c om> on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:55AM (#61072152)

      Jumping Jehoshaphat, the company had already spent $800,000,000 in COVID19 remediation by the end of May (yes, that's the correct number of zeros). That''s more than Walmart, Target and Kroger have spent to date, combined. Being anti-Amazon brings in the campaign contributions among a certain segment of the population though, and that's what this is really about. Staying quiet about Walmart's horrible working conditions and poverty-level pay brings in another set of contributions as well.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 )

        Jumping Jehoshaphat, the company had already spent $800,000,000 in COVID19 remediation by the end of May (yes, that's the correct number of zeros). .

        And their profit grew in 2021 by 86%, due to people shopping by internet instead of in stores. That's a sales increase of $175,000,000,000. Yes that's the correct number of zeroes.

        The $800M you mention (about $7M per warehouse; they have 110 warehouses in the US) represents 0.2% of their sales.

        • Re:Meanwhile in NY (Score:4, Insightful)

          by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian.bixby@gmail . c om> on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @01:18PM (#61072498)

          Do you have some artificial percentage point that they have to hit? Otherwise I really don't see your point. Should they have erected walls of $100 bills between workers instead of plexiglass ones to bring it up to 2%, or what?

          The work environment of every single one of the 850,000 employees worldwide has changed, the fulfillment centers most of all, they're about as safe as they can make these places. Now go watch a crew unload the truck at your closest Target store tomorrow morning, they're doing it essentially the same as they were in 1994 when I did that job, now there's an extra foot or two between workers and in most states they have to wear masks.

          This is politics nothing more. It's currently trendy to hate on Amazon and brings rewards in the 'bobbing for campaign contributions' contest.

          • Do you have some artificial percentage point that they have to hit?

            Do you? You were the one who said "Jumping Jehoshaphat!" about Amazon spending of $7M per warehouse on safety. The court filing we're discussing says that the safety measures were inadequate. Do you have some metric that says $7M per warehouse is enough?

            I'm just pointing out that while you may say "Jumping Jehoshaphat", it is an absolutely trivial amount of money compared to what they are taking in.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by cusco ( 717999 )

              Two things, first off that was money spent by the end of May, they've poured out well over $4 billion now (I think more than $6 billion but can't find an authoritative number at the moment).

              Second, if an FC has 1500 employees (most of them have fewer) that's $4,600 they spent on each employee in the first five months, and since most of the jobs are multiple shifts each work area would have received a multiple of that. I seriously doubt that the other large retailers have spent even 10% of that per employee

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The amount they spent it irrelevant. What matters is if they put profit before safety.

        By the way, the lawsuit says their profits were up massively during the pandemic. 800 million seems like a good investment.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          You can only spend the money to make improvements just so fast. This, via the company's COVID19 blog:

          https://www.aboutamazon.com/ne... [aboutamazon.com]
          When COVID-19 started, over the course of 60-days, we put in place—and scaled globally—more than 150 major process changes to help ensure our teams stayed safe and healthy while at work. We’ve rolled out and improved even more safety protocols in months since. For example, we enhanced cleaning, staggered shift times to maintain social distancing as employee

    • According to Amazon that's what he did. So take that with a grain of salt. Also NY noted that they fired two other workers who complained about CoVID conditions. That seems to fall under violations of whistleblower protections.
  • Sue the party with the deepest pockets. All you need to do is talk the majority of the jury members into giving the poor underpaid workers an award from the rich company; merit of the case is irrelevant.

    • Normally the big company will get sued because, they are causing the most amount of damage. Say 100 workers died from Covid-19 due to bad company policies for a big company. Vs. 2 workers died across 50 companies for the same problem.

      Targeting 1 company in behalf of the injustice done for 100 people is much easier, than having to fight 50 companies. Also with a big win, you get legal prescience, making going after the smaller companies much easier, as there is now a process behind it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Three workers in a single Kroger store in Michigan died, in part because the company didn't even supply employees with masks until April, and didn't require they be worn until May. By that time Amazon had already spent $800 million in COVID remediation. But Amazon gets sued, not Kroger. Want to know why? Kroger won't just pay the lawyers to go away like Amazon has been known to do.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Freischutz ( 4776131 )

      Sue the party with the deepest pockets. All you need to do is talk the majority of the jury members into giving the poor underpaid workers an award from the rich company; merit of the case is irrelevant.

      Oh joy, another knucklehead who's been reading Ayn Rand. I love how you libertarian/objectivist types are willing to defend any amount of tyranny, injustice and abuse in the name of profit until somebody makes you suffer the consequences of your greed.

      Here's how this looks from the point of view of an Amazon worker: Abuse the party with the least power. All you need to do is bribe some politicians to look the other way as you subject the poor underpaid workers to inhuman conditions in the middle of a pand

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Amusing that every issue with Libertardianism can be solved by thundering herds of lawyers.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Freischutz ( 4776131 )

          Amusing that every issue with Libertardianism can be solved by thundering herds of lawyers.

          Amusing how libertarians are willing to defend any amount of tyranny, injustice and abuse in the name of lining their own pockets including the use of the legal system as a weapon right up until they themselves are sued over their abuses at which point they magically instantly claim that they and not their victims are the tyrannised, persecuted and oppressed. ** Enter stage right: A choir of weeping libertarians, their hoard of lawyers, PR people and a legion of useful idiots **

  • Probably true but new york city is a hypocrite here. They keep trying to reopen restaurants before it's time, which is putting restaurant workers at risk. They don't care about lives, just money

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      > They keep trying to reopen restaurants before it's time

      How do you force a restaurant open?

      They can force a restaurant closed, but they give you the option to open... or not, your choice.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      based on what evidence here? I ask because I just read a report this morning comparing CA to FL in responses and measures. The two states were as opposite as it can get in responses over the last few months and yet the results turned out to be strikingly the same. Lockdown, no lockdown, restaurant closures, capacity limits, masks, these two states were totally at polar opposites. The results:

      Florida experienced 8306 cases and 117 deaths per 100,000 residents

      California experienced 8499 cases and 130 deaths

    • NYC has actually been for the most part shut down since May. Outdoor restaurants were open for a bit. The financial hit the city has taken is likely the highest in the world.

      That said, what state has done as far as covering up their initial mistakes as far as nursing homes is another matter. I don't fault them for the mistakes, they got hit hard and early while the CDC was preaching the wash your hands approach to solving the pandemic.

      However the cover up to make themselves into Covid handling demigods is d

  • At least they did not drop sick elderly into old folks homes like medieval warfare. I guess they will not be going after emperor Coumo.

  • Where are the criminal charges for Cuomo? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:26AM (#61072052)

    He sent tons of infected to retirement homes, allegedly put up gag orders on the staff and falsified official records. The latter alone should be worth a criminal conspiracy investigation given that the conspiracy was covering up the government's role in over 10k unnecessary negligent homicides.

    Good thing I have karma to burn because I can almost guarantee this is going to get modded down -2 troll because lunatic, TDS-afflicted Slashdot users can't stand the idea that "even if Trump is Hitler, other people can be just as bad as Trump."

    • I would mod your post as "offtopic", not troll, simply because the article doesn't mention Cuomo at all. The attorney general is suing Amazon, not the governor. Don't lump the two entities together.

  • New York just wants money. They screwed the pooch big time and now they're looking for a wealthy scapegoat to extract money either by a judgement or a settlement. Perhaps the citizenry should sue New York for not only putting seriously ill COVID patients in nursing homes but also NOT using the Javits Center and the hospital ship because of TDS.

  • Amazon has needed a better CEO for a long time. My opinion. The new CEO:

    How Andy Jassy, Amazon’s Next C.E.O., Was a ‘Brain Double’ for Jeff Bezos [nytimes.com].

    Meet Andy Jassy, the next CEO of Amazon [cnn.com].

    Meet Andy Jassy, Amazon’s next CEO [theverge.com].

    Quote: "Amazon is getting a new CEO for the first time in its 27-year-history..."

  • Given the poor ethics of New York State public officials, we should ask if this is a for-profit shakedown. With the tobacco suits the state attorneys general would sign contingency contracts with private law firms to prosecute cigarette manufacturers on behalf of the state. If they won those private attorneys got to keep part of the settlement. The Wall Street Journal described those attorneys as "living like sultans" because their portions of the settlements were up to about $400 million.

    One way to tell

  • Semi-Insider Info . . . (Score:5, Informative)

    by Salgak1 ( 20136 ) <salgak@s[ ]keasy.net ['pea' in gap]> on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:59AM (#61072176) Homepage

    Both of my daughters work at an Amazon facility. They report that when an employee in the warehouse test positive, or is actually sick with COVID. . . .Amazon management doesn't even alert the employee's co-workers in their work unit, much less the entire facility. The general method of finding out that a co-worker either tested positive, or was actually sick. . . .is when they return to work, and tell their co-workers. . . .

    • Part of this is HIPPA abuse, but a bigger part is employees not communicating status back to the company in a timely fashion. This was a especially problematic when test turn-around times were 4-7 days. You just did not have the data necessary to make smart decisions.

      • Re:Semi-Insider Info . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DRJlaw ( 946416 ) on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @01:15PM (#61072486)

        Part of this is HIPPA abuse, but a bigger part is employees not communicating status back to the company in a timely fashion. This was a especially problematic when test turn-around times were 4-7 days. You just did not have the data necessary to make smart decisions.

        No part of this is HIPPA abuse. I work at a large law firm and we are required to immediately inform the firm of a positive COVID test, whereupon the firm will immediately (without naming names) notify the other members of the office, shift to work-from-home, and deep clean the facilities. Nothing in HIPPA prohibits the requirement to disclose or the notification.

        And don't attempt to blame this on "employees not communicating status back to the company in a timely fashion." Amazon doesn't notify at all.

        • Actually, I have pretty good information about employees not communicating their condition to their employers, first-hand, and third-hand for employers including Amazon and various Meat Packers. A common theme is that someone notifies their supervisor that they are sick and stays home. A day or two later, said employee might decide to take a COVID test, and get results back in 4-7 days. They don’t necessarily continue to report sick each day to the employer to provide status updates. Eventually empl

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

            ctually, I have pretty good information about employees not communicating their condition to their employers, first-hand, and third-hand for employers including Amazon and various Meat Packers.

            Anecdotes are neither data nor evidence that negates the charge that Amazon does not notify other employees in instances where they were notified by the employee.

    • Anecdotally, I would say this is probably the same in most large firms. Earlier in the pandemic the national chain grocery store I frequent made actual TV news when a couple employees tested positive, they closed the store, wiped it down, etc. Then months later I was chatting up the checkout person and they were saying all sorts of employees were testing positive left and right, and what an issue it was for scheduling hours, overtime etc. I was sort of shocked, but it's really just an evolution of under

  • Holy god. I wonder what that NY prosecutor would do if Amazon's carelessness lead to 8000 to 16000 deaths.

  • It is not the fault of the person who came to work sick and coughed on you, because that person doesn't have a million bucks. It's the employer's fault, because the employer has money. Liability in America is always shifted to the party with the money, not the responsible one.

  • Oh the irony of people who've spent the last 10 months ordering shit they can live without from Amazon at unprecedented leves during a pandemic suing Amazon because the only way to meet demand was to have people working in an unsafe environment. There seems to be a massive disconnect in the public when it comes to understanding just how the fuck shit gets to their doorstep. Do they think it just magics itself there with no human intervention other than the parcel guy delivering it the last leg of the journe
  • I think it is hardly a coincidence that NY's AG took this step shortly after being forced to release the real nursing home death numbers. That's a serious problem for Cuomo, and this just seems like a way to distract the public from the scandal exploding in his face.

    Speaking of, why is this piece up on Slashdot, but there have been no articles about the "revised" nursing home death numbers? They peaked two weeks after Cuomo ordered nursing homes to take infected patients. Which, given the incubation pe

  • Sure, lets have the people that killed more than any other place in the world for their poor actions go after others for what they claim they did!

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