Senators and former presidential candidates Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kirstin Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) are two of the five senators who penned and signed a letter to Jeff Bezos expressing dismay at the work conditions of Amazon employees.
The letter, sent Monday, highlighted how a former Amazon warehouse employee, Chris Smalls, was reportedly fired when he organized a walkout and wrote an open letter to CEO Jeff Bezos demanding better working conditions for warehouse employees during the coronavirus pandemic.
The letter was published in The Guardian and documented how Smalls witnessed fellow employees around him becoming ill while working to fill the high volume of customer orders during the pandemic. Despite reporting concerns to Human Resources, Smalls saw no noticeable improvements. When he found Amazon to be “unresponsive,” Smalls organized a walkout with other employees.
A few days before the walkout, Smalls said he was placed on medical quarantine due to illness exposure. Amazon said in a statement he was later fired for breaking his mandated quarantine, ABC News reports.
Now, Booker and Gillibrand, along with Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), want to know more about the details of Smalls’s termination.
“The right to organize is a bedrock of our economy, responsible for many of the greatest advances achieved by workers over generations,” the letter read.
The senators specifically raised issues regarding the timeline of Small’s firing, citing incongruities with the date of Smalls’s quarantine and the alleged date of exposure, as well as how this quarantine coincided with the employee walkout. Additionally, the lawmakers also want to see the criteria and process Amazon uses when deciding to quarantine an employee.
After reading Smalls’s open letter, the five senators also want more information on the potentially unsafe working conditions in Amazon’s facilities. The primary concern is whether there is enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for workers to stay safe and avoid coronavirus contact.
“Any failure of Amazon to keep its workers safe does not just put their employees at risk, it puts the entire country at risk,” the letter concluded.
The senators have requested the company respond to them no later than April 14.
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