Prioritising Profit Over People During Pandemic: New York Sues Amazon Over Flagrant Disregard For Employee Health And Safety

New York’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Amazon accusing the online retail behemoth of not doing enough to protect workers in the state from the coronavirus, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Amazon’s flagrant disregard for health and safety requirements has threatened serious illness and grave harm to the thousands of workers in these facilities and poses a continued substantial and specific danger to the public health,” Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, said in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday (Feb 16).

Amazon sued New York last week in a bid to prevent the state from taking legal action against the company over its handling of worker safety during the pandemic and the firing of one of its warehouse workers last year.

In the lawsuit filed by New York, the state's attorney general alleged that since the start of the pandemic last March, the company failed to do enough cleaning and disinfection; didn’t notified workers who have been in contact with infected colleagues; and maintained productivity policies don’t give workers have enough time for hygiene and social distancing.

“Amazon’s extreme profits and exponential growth rate came at the expense of the lives, health, and safety of its frontline workers,” Ms. James said in the filing.

For the quarter ending Dec 2020, Amazon posted a record quarterly sales topping $125.5 billion.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder’s personal wealth, which is mostly in Amazon stock, has skyrocketed during the pandemic. Last August, he became the first person to see personal net worth surge above $200 billion.

Bezos yesterday regained his title as the world’s richest person after he leapfrogged Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who had briefly surpassed Bezos earlier this month to become the richest person in the worl

Amazon, which was already controlling close to 50% of the U.S. e-commerce market, but during the COVID-19 crisis, traffic on Amazon.com increased by as much as 20%, while demand for some services, such as home grocery delivery, soared by as much as 90% while brick and mortar stores were temporarily shuttered in many countries.