Friday, May 1st protests will be held out by many retail companies including Amazon, Whole Foods, Walmart, Fed Ex, Target, Instacart, and Shipt. This will be also held on a holiday as May 1st is International Workers' Day.
The workers are saying that their employers have put them at risk working with not enough cleaning supplies, hazard pay, or sick pay. They also have remarked that their employers have taken so much in profit during these times and they are not getting a piece of the profit.
It has been talked about that Amazon in New York fell hard with COVID-19 claims. It is terrifying to think that the products that were being handled were spread across the US with a possible virus attached.
However, retail companies say differently.
Heres one statement from Amazon:
“While we respect people’s right to express themselves, we object to the irresponsible actions of labor groups in spreading misinformation and making false claims about Amazon during this unprecedented health and economic crisis. . . . What’s true is that masks, temperature checks, hand sanitizer, increased time off, increased pay, and more are standard across our Amazon and Whole Food Market networks already. Our [500,000] employees are doing incredible work for their communities every day, and we have invested heavily in their health and safety through increased safety measures and the procurement of millions of safety supplies and have invested nearly $700 million in increased pay. Working globally with our teams and third parties we have gone to extreme measures to understand and address this pandemic with more than 150 process changes to-date.”
However according to Fast Company:
Much of the ire is directed at Amazon, which has come under fire over the course of the pandemic for allegedly failing to notify workers of confirmed cases of coronavirus or to thoroughly sanitize workplaces that were infected. Last month, Amazon workers in Staten Island staged a protest, after which one of its organizers, Christian Smalls, was dismissed by the company. (Amazon denies the dismissal was because of the protest and claims he was terminated for “putting the health and safety of others at risk.”) Smalls is a lead organizer of this Friday’s strike.
The strike follows a line of protests held by workers at Amazon, Instacart, Whole Foods, and Shipt over the last two months, whose employers have seen unprecedented profits as staffers on the ground restock shelves and run deliveries. The demonstrations reflect growing unrest among the nation’s essential workers, who are entering their third month of duty on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. And tensions are likely to rise as the federal lockdown lifts, states begin to reopen, and thousands of Americans return to their jobs.
It is definitely obvious the protests will make it nearly impossible to shop at these retail stores or utilize Amazon or shipping companies alike. So buyer beware.