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Amazon Employees Forced To Worked Despite Having COVID-19, How Safe Are Your Online Deliveries?

One after another, Amazon employees have been catching Coronavirus and dropping dead on the job.

While such deaths have become far too common over all the Amazon facilities, the company has decided to hide the number of deaths and infections among the workers.

Many Amazon facilities with a high risk of infection are still running

Image Credit: ABC News

George Leigh, a worker at Amazon’s New York distribution center, died of Coronavirus recently. His job was to sort packages and pallets, and training new employees.

After his death, Amazon workers have increased pressure on the company to release the data about how many workers are actually infected and how many have died so far.

Workers have also complained that Amazon doesn’t even give them paid sick leaves. While Amazon’s safety measures are lax and dangerous. Many Amazon facilities with high counts of infection are still running, and the company has refused to close them.

Workers were forced to work without masks till April 10th

Image Credit: Magzter

George got infected because he was forced to work without a mask or any safety procedure. Amazon simply didn’t care about the safety of their workers and their customers as they kept pushing employees to work when the virus outbreak was at its peak.

Amazon started giving masks to the workers after 4th April, by the time US already had 300,000 cases. All Amazon workers were able to get masks by 10th April, by the time the cases had mounted to 500,000.

George told his superiors about his illness but no one listened

His brother said that George went to his manager on 28th March and said that he was feeling sick and he needed to go home.

Although Amazon denies that they knew anything about George’s infection, saying that he never told them.

George was forced to keep working until his sickness got so severe that he had to be rushed to a hospital. He couldn’t breathe, and he died soon afterwards.

Amazon workers have collected the number of cases and deaths in the company

While Amazon continues to hide the real number of infections and deaths, the workers have tried to keep an unofficial tally. The estimate in the USA puts the number of cases at 900 while 10 workers have died on the job.

As pressure builds on Amazon from all sides to release the data they are hiding, Amazon’s senior vice president of operations, Dave Clark thinks it’s not even useful to track the number of Amazon workers getting infected and dying.

“I do not know the total number of coronavirus infections at the company. I don’t have the number right on me at this moment because it’s not a particularly useful number.”

Even George’s family got infected

Image Credit: MSN

George was not only forced to work without a mask despite being sick, he was also forced to train new workers and there was no way for him to practice any kind of social distancing.

Even when George was hospitalized, he was worried about his job since he was not getting paid for taking sick leaves, and he needed money to survive. His brother said:

“He was so afraid. Before that, he questioned [going to work]. But he had bills to pay, so he said, ‘I’ve got my gloves, I’m going to do my job and try to stay safe.'”

And that is not all, George’s younger brother and his wife also got caught the virus from George.

A friend of George said that they stayed home to avoid catching the virus because too many people were getting sick at work. They could afford to stay home so they did, but they were afraid that if their name was revealed to the media then they will get fired for telling the truth.

Amazon has muzzled the workers and threatened them to face consequences if they speak about the Coronavirus situation in the company

Image Credit: CNET

Amazon is still denying that George died from Coronavirus, even after the hospital confirmed that the death was caused by the virus.

George’s brother has written a letter to Jeff Bezos and filed a complaint with the New York Department of Labour. But he has not gotten any response from either of the places.

In fact, Amazon has threatened its workers to not speak to the media about Coronavirus cases or they’ll have to suffer the consequences. This is already threatening the lives of the workers, but even the customers could get the virus through the delivered packages.

There is still no concept of paid sick leaves at Amazon, and most employees are using masks and sanitizers bought with their own money.

On other side, Amazon’s profits have doubled now during the Coronavirus lockdown, propelling Jeff Bezos to become the world’s first trillionaire in the next 6 years. He’ll have a thousand billion dollars, while his workers die at their jobs.

And you thought Sauron and Voldemort were evil.

 

 

Featured Image Courtesy: Headline Code

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