New York Attorney General Letitia James filed suit against Amazon, alleging that the company is not meeting safety requirements for workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
The state’s suit, filed Tuesday night, accuses Amazon of not following COVID-19 prevention protocols at fulfillment centers on Staten Island and a delivery depot in Queens. These requirements include regular cleaning of facilities, social distancing, and a system of notifying workers if they have been exposed to the virus.
“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,” James wrote in her complaint.
James also criticized Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement for profiting from the pandemic while “hardworking employees were forced to endure unsafe conditions and were retaliated against for rightfully voicing these concerns.”
In a Wednesday tweet, James accused the company of putting “profits over people.”
Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel told the Washington Examiner that the company cares “deeply about the health and safety of our employees.”
“We don’t believe the attorney general’s filing presents an accurate picture of Amazon’s industry-leading response to the pandemic,” Nantel said.
The suit comes after Amazon sued New York last week in an effort to block James’s lawsuit. The company wrote in its complaint that the state attorney general overstepped her authority by attempting to regulate workplace safety. The company said that it had taken “extraordinary” measures to protect its employees from COVID-19.
The dispute arose last year after Amazon fired Christian Smalls, a manager at the Staten Island center. Smalls had spoken out against his working conditions and hours. Amazon wrote in its complaint that James had “threatened to sue” it if the company did not reinstate Smalls to his prior position as well as comply with a series of other demands.
This summer, Smalls and a group of protesters gathered outside Bezos’s Washington, D.C., residence and erected a guillotine to protest the billionaire’s company.
Smalls said that if Amazon didn’t meet his demands, he would “shut it down.”
“Hey, Jeff Bezos. I’m going to let you know something today: We are just getting started,” Smalls said. “We’re going to go to every single location you’ve got across the country and set up shop until you meet our demands as workers.”
