A crowd-sourced tracking tool launched on Wednesday will allow Amazon workers to report and monitor the growing number of coronavirus cases in their facilities, as the company refuses to publicly release comprehensive figures.
United for Respect, a worker advocacy group, has released the new system, which will rely on reports from employees to keep a more accurate count of how many workers have been diagnosed with Covid-19.
The tool comes as Amazon confirmed the death of a worker in one of its New York warehouses from coronavirus this week and employees demand paid sick leave and protest lack of protection. The company still refuses to share publicly – or with its employees – the total number of sick workers at each facility.
Workers say Amazon sends them an alert when someone in their workplace is diagnosed with coronavirus, but does not include the total numbers.
Not knowing the scale of the pandemic has contributed to growing anxiety in the workplace where employees have become frontline workers, said Courtenay Brown, an Amazon warehouse worker in New Jersey and member of United for Respect said.
“It is complete and utter chaos and panic,” she said. “A lot of people are scared. We are not just getting sick anymore – we are dying.”
Some employees have previously attempted to make the count themselves. Jana Jumpp, an Amazon employee in Indiana, has been tracking cases and logged at least 500 cases in 125 Amazon facilities as of late April.
The employee who died on Tuesday worked at a warehouse in New York where workers staged a walkout protesting poor working conditions and lack of protection from coronavirus. Amazon later fired the employee responsible for the walkout.
Last week, workers participated in a nationwide sick-out to protest against poor working conditions and inadequate safety protections, claiming the company has failed to provide enough face masks for workers, did not implement regular temperature checks it promised at warehouses, and has refused to give workers paid sick leave.
The tracker will act as a central repository for workers to document reports of positive cases as they arise and as a place to submit media reports of coronavirus cases. Workers can add new reports from their facility along with texts, voicemails, and other communication from management.
The group previously launched a companion map to track the spread of Covid-19 at Walmart. In the first 24 hours, it generated reports in more than 100 facilities, and now includes more than 400 worker-generated reports of Covid-19 cases.
“Amazon should have already done this, but since they won’t do it, workers will do it,” Brown said.
A spokesman for Amazon told the Guardian the company “expects to invest” approximately $4bn from April to June on Covid-related initiatives to “get products to customers and keep employees safe”.
“Like most global companies, we’ve had employees affected by this, and we’re doing all that we can to protect our employees and take the proper precautions as stated in WHO guidelines,” he said. “Our top concern is ensuring the health and safety of our employees.”
Amazon made more than $33m per hour in the first three months of the year, according its first quarter earnings report. The chief executive officer, Jeff Bezos, who was already the richest man in the world, has personally seen his fortune swell by $13bn this month to $145bn.
