The Amazon.com, Inc. BHM1 success heart is seen earlier than dawn on March 29, 2021, in Bessemer, Alabama. | Supply: PATRICK T. FALLON / Getty
Within the newest instance of shameless company greed and a fundamental disregard for human rights, an Amazon warehouse initially denied a request for a go away of absence by an worker who was shot after being struck by the truck pushed within the lethal New Yr’s Day assault in New Orleans.
Alexis Scott-Windham not solely had her proper foot run over by the pickup truck that plowed right into a crowd on the closely populated Bourbon Road however the 23-year-old Cell, Alabama, resident was additionally subsequently shot in the identical foot through the assault that killed no less than 15 individuals and injured dozens extra.
MORE: Right here’s What We Know About The Victims Of The Bourbon Road New Yr’s Eve Assault
“He was coming so quick, there wasn’t any time to maneuver all the way in which out the way in which,” Scott-Windham instructed NOLA.com of the driving force, recognized by legislation enforcement as Shamsud-Din Jabbar. “I used to be simply blessed that I solely bought shot within the foot and I made it again dwelling.”
However that blessing was reportedly initially greeted with obvious indifference by the Amazon warehouse that employs Scott-Windham, the mom of an toddler who nonetheless has a bullet lodged in her foot and suffered a number of fractures.
“The Amazon warehouse the place she works initially denied her request for a go away of absence,” NOLA.com reported earlier than including later: “however the firm mentioned in a press release Friday that they’ve since spoken together with her and given her break day with pay.”
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel instructed NOLA.com of Scott-Windham: “We want her a full restoration and look ahead to welcoming her again to work as soon as she’s in a position.”
It was unclear what made Amazon have a change of coronary heart, what with the company conglomerate’s status for exploiting its staff.
Amazon’s documented historical past of employee exploitation
Amazon has persistently been on the coronary heart of employment-based disputes centered on higher pay, therapy and situations for its staff.
Notably, in 2023, the U.S. Division of Labor (DOL) discovered that Amazon failed “to maintain staff secure and delivered hazard alert letters for exposing staff to ergonomic hazards.” In these findings, DOL additionally decided that “Amazon uncovered warehouse staff to a excessive danger of low again accidents and different musculoskeletal problems.”
Occupational security studies present that Amazon has a better charge of accidents than different warehouses.
This previous June, Amazon Labor Union members overwhelmingly voted to hitch the 1.3 million-member Worldwide Brotherhood of Teamsters, one thing that had been a very long time coming for employment advocates. Amazon had beforehand resisted organized labor efforts for years.
Notably, in 2020, simply because the COVID-19 pandemic was starting, Amazon fired Christian Smalls, a employee at its Staten Island success heart in New York Metropolis. Smalls was let go virtually instantly after he led a gaggle of fellow workers in a walkout from the constructing in protest over accusations that Amazon inadequately responded to the pandemic and didn’t safeguard their staff, whose calls for have been merely for the constructing to be quickly closed and extra vigorously sanitized and for workers to be paid through the hiatus, contemplating a couple of of them had grow to be sick.
In line with Vice, Amazon held an inside management assembly discussing their response to the coronavirus pandemic the place billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos was even current. In leaked notes for the assembly, the Staten Island incident got here up and so they used racist tropes to explain Smalls deeming him “not sensible or articulate.”
Amazon says they fired Smalls as a result of he violated a company-imposed 14-day quarantine after he got here in touch with a employee who examined constructive for the coronavirus. Nevertheless, Smalls says the worker who examined constructive had contact with many different staff for longer intervals of time earlier than her check got here again. He argues that he was singled out after pleading with administration to sanitize the warehouse and to be extra clear concerning the variety of staff who have been sick.
Notes uncovered from Amazon Common Counsel David Zapolsky urged firm executives to make use of Smalls to discredit the broader labor motion at Amazon, contemplating staff at an NYC warehouse often called JFK8 ignited an effort to unionize in 2018.
In 2022, Smalls was invited to testify earlier than a Senate Funds Committee listening to titled “Ought to Taxpayer {Dollars} Go to Firms that Violate Labor Legal guidelines?”
That is America.
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