Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Tuesday the company could do more to treat employees better and acknowledged one of its approaches to worker safety during the coronavirus pandemic fell short.
With a 1.2 million-person workforce like Amazon has, “it’s almost like a small country,” Jassy said at the GeekWire Summit, according to CNBC, adding that “there are lots of things you could do better.”
“We never anticipated having a pandemic or having demand like that. But, unfortunately, it didn’t work the way we wanted it to work.
When pressed for specifics, Jassy cited the paid sick leave policy Amazon implemented in March 2020, which guaranteed up to two weeks of paid sick leave to employees diagnosed with COVID-19 or ordered by public health officials to quarantine. In addition, Amazon initially said it would let full- and part-time employees take unlimited unpaid sick leave but rolled back that policy in May 2020.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s new promise.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy mentioned Tuesday the company could do more to treat workers better and acknowledged one among its approaches to employee security throughout the coronavirus pandemic fell brief.
“I think if you have a large group of people as we do — we have 1.2 million employees — it’s almost like a small country,” Jassy mentioned on stage at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle. “There are lots of things you could do better.”
When requested what Amazon could do better, Jassy pointed to its processes around pandemics go away in its warehouses. For example, Amazon told workers it would present up to two weeks of paid sick, go away for workers who confirmed signs, had the virus, or were in quarantine.
But that course didn’t work ultimately. For example, Amazon workers told CNBC final April, they were skilled points getting paid, whereas they had been out on the go-away. Additionally, the company’s highly automated human source programs grew to become so overloaded with workers requesting Covid-19 go away that some workers had been mistakenly denied sick go away or threatened with termination, Bloomberg reported.
“During the pandemic in our fulfillment centers, we had a system and a process around people being able to request short and long term leave, and the process just didn’t scale,” Jassy mentioned. “We never anticipated having a pandemic or having demand like that. So it didn’t work the way we wanted it to work.”
Read Amazon is not treating workers nicely.
Amazon and different e-commerce firms benefited from the coronavirus-fueled surge in online orders. But the pandemic additionally generated unprecedented pressure on Amazon’s achievement and logistics operations and examined the company’s relationship with its frontline workers, who could not work remotely. As a result, Amazon disclosed last October that just about 20,000 frontline workers contracted Covid-19 between March 1, 2020, and September 19, 2020.
The coronavirus pandemic set in movement a rising push amongst Amazon warehouse and supply workers to advocate for better working circumstances, central to protests and organizing attempts. In the months earlier than stepping down as CEO, Amazon founder and government chairman Jeff Bezos outlined a vision for making the company “Earth’s best employer” and pledged to treat workers better.
“We don’t pretend that we’re perfect,” Jassy mentioned. “Sometimes, I think there are exaggerations and anecdotal references that aren’t reflective of the whole. But there’s plenty we can keep working on and that we will be working on.”
Jassy additionally mentioned he is all for reshaping Amazon’s relationship with the metropolis of Seattle, the place the company is headquartered. Seattle lawmakers sparked animosity with Amazon in 2018 once they handed a so-called “head tax” that aimed to levy increased taxes on massive firms. Lawmakers ultimately scuttled the tax. However, that did little to restore the metropolis’s relationship with Amazon.
The Bottom Line
Amid the surge in workers requesting paid time off under Amazon’s COVID-19 policy, its highly automated human resources systems also erroneously denied workers’ requests and even threatened them with termination for missing work, Bloomberg reported in June 2020.
“During the pandemic in our fulfillment centers, we had a system and a process around people being able to request short and long term leave, and the process just didn’t scale,” Jassy said Tuesday, according to CNBC.
Amazon said in October that 19,000 of its “frontline” employees had tested positive for COVID-19, though infectious disease experts told Bloomberg the study was flawed and lacked vital data.
During the pandemic, Amazon employees and contractors have increasingly spoken out about hazardous working conditions – already a concern before COVID-19 – accusing the company of not protecting its workers, especially workers of color, sufficiently.
Amid the surge in workers requesting paid time off under Amazon’s COVID-19 policy, its highly automated human resources systems also erroneously denied workers’ requests and even threatened them with termination for missing work, Bloomberg reported in June 2020.
“During the pandemic in our fulfillment centers, we had a system and a process around people being able to request short and long term leave, and the process just didn’t scale,” Jassy said Tuesday, according to CNBC.
Amazon said in October that 19,000 of its “frontline” employees had tested positive for COVID-19, though infectious disease experts told Bloomberg the study was flawed and lacked vital data.
During the pandemic, Amazon employees and contractors have increasingly spoken out about hazardous working conditions – already a concern before COVID-19 – accusing the company of not protecting its workers, especially workers of color, sufficiently.
Employees and labor regulators have also accused the company of retaliating against whistleblowers who have attempted to draw attention to the risks facing workers and recently settled with two such whistleblowers, avoiding a trial that could have exposed more details about its labor practices.
Read Jeff Bezos is going to win in a race.
