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On the night of Sunday, August 9, staff at the Amazon MKE1 distribution center in Kenosha, Wisconsin, won an SMS alert from the company: more of their colleagues had tested positive for coronavirus and faced their social distance. notifications in line with the week of the last 4 weeks.
The next day, the National Weather Service issued a whirlwind warning for the county: managers took many workers to windowless rooms where they husned from side to side for part of an hour, waiting for the typhoon to pass.
“They were pushing other people into the bathrooms, with no problems more than two hundred in each,” an existing worker said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because Amazon staff can’t talk to the press. “They had no plan. ” There is no social estgnation, surely none, ” he said.
But if this half-hour in a crowded room has led to more cases of Covid-19 among his colleagues, he has no idea, nor does the local fitness government seem to know. The company refused to provide information on the total number of cases in the warehouse despite repeated requests from fitness branch officials, based on more than 700 pages of internal correspondence from the Kenosha County Health Division received through NBC News under the Wisconsin Public Records Act.
Kenosha County’s fitness director, dr. Jen Freiheit described Amazon as “less than simple to work on” in an email sent to a colleague in May, referring to efforts to find out how many staff members had tested positive for Covid-19.
Amazon’s lack of transparency, combined with the lack of federal protections for U. S. personnel, is in the absence of transparency. But it’s not the first time By contracting infectious diseases in the workplace, it makes it almost unlikely to track the spread of Covid-19 on one of america’s largest employers. But it’s not the first time An e-commerce related to coronavirus. This has left some of its 500,000 warehouse employees in its 110 U. S. distribution centers. U. S. , which is considered an essential lock, looking to fill the data gap.
There is also a lack of information from the fitness government. NBC News contacted 25 fitness centres with major concentrations of Amazon distribution centers and other logistics warehouses in 16 states to request Covid-related research records and warehouse office inspections and email communications with Amazon. varied, with only a handful of fitness offering applicable records.
Only five departments provided appropriate records of the office’s investigations and inspections. Two rejected the programs on the grounds that the files contained sensitive data that could simply “damage a user or company”, while one said it was too busy to process the files. Six reported receiving the application but did not respond within two months, five said they had no compliant records, adding Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where APV1 facility staff in Hazle Township counted at least 81 cases, while two did not recognize the programs.
NBC News also requested emails exchanged between Amazon and those fitness services. Seven returned applicable files, 4 returned applicable files and 4 said they did not have a compliant record. Five fitness departments reported that they needed more time; 4 declared the request but never responded; while Harris County, Texas, said he was too busy to process the recordings.
Amazon workers also said they didn’t have much information. NBC News spoke to 40 Amazon workers from 23 locations who said that many of Amazon’s security measures that followed at the start of the pandemic are no longer active or difficult to enforce. Amazon’s main points, it’s difficult to make informed decisions about protecting you from going to work. Some have started tracking positive instances of Covid-19 on their services through Facebook teams and spreadsheets.
Amazon’s lack of transparency is compounded by what fitness experts in the office describe as insufficient legal coverage, which is added up through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which has left Amazon workers and many other employers with little coverage and little information about the epidemics they face. Work.
Amazon spokeswoman Lisa Levandowski said the company had prioritized the threat of a life-threatening tornado in Kenosha, on FEMA’s advice, and that there had been no increase in instances similar to the event.
Levandowski said Amazon also reports all positive Covid-19 cases among the staff at the fitness branch where the employee lives, but does not publish the total number of cases damaged on the premises to create “unnecessary fear. “
“We believe that sharing the number of instances is misleading and lacks a lot of context, such as the last time each user was on the site, the overall infection rate on the network where the site is located, the network’s knowledge of the position of the residence partner, delays since the start of the pandemic, and the overall rate compared to other “Array” companies Said.
Last March, Jana Jumpp, then an Amazon worker at an Indiana distribution center, began running with other Amazon workers across the country to begin figuring out how many warehouse workers hired Covid-19.
Jumpp, who resigned from his task in July, said he presented the task because he believed Amazon was not providing staff with enough instance data to make informed decisions about access to tables in a pandemic.
“Someone else to keep the marker, ” he said.
Since then, she and a volunteer organization have spent time on Facebook teams for warehouse workers collecting screenshots of positive Covid-19 case notifications. They added the instances to a spreadsheet, creating the maximum public symbol of the pandemic propagation on Amazon. warehouses in the United States.
According to Jumpp’s data, there were 2,038 positive cases and, according to NBC News’ own investigation, at least 10 deaths, which Amazon confirmed; However, there could possibly be more cases, as this estimate is based on claims that Amazon sends to workers in case of new positive instances. These notifications reveal multiple new instances, but do not specify whether this means two instances or 10. Jumpp counts those notifications as two instances.
By comparison, United for Respect, an employee advocacy group, collected information about Covid-19 cases and deaths among Walmart’s 1. 5 million in the United States. According to employee knowledge, at least 1497 cases and 22 deaths have been reported.
Walmart responded to a request for comment.
The lack of data on the scope and severity of coronavirus outbreaks at Amazon distribution centers in the United States is due to a combination of Amazon’s indistinct communication with its and little or no need by local and national regulators to report the number of positive coronavirus cases entering your facility.
Amazon painters said they got confusing data from the company about positive cases in text message paintings, emails, and an application used through painters.
“The texts we received distinguish between the fact that one or more instances were discovered that day, however, it is as accurate as possible. You don’t know if they were on your shift or in the same segment as you,” John Hopkins said. , which works at Amazon’s DSF4 distribution center in San Leandro, California.
NBC News reviewed dozens of screenshots of those notifications shared by staff. They report that one or more staff members tested positive at the facility and the date they were last on site. with employees in poor health, however, the staff were unaware of what was happening.
“As far as I know, no one in my establishment has been informed that it is close enough to a positive case to be quarantined, and it is a fairly small facility, so it turns out that no one would come into contact with one. of the other people who were sick,” Hopkins says. It turns out to me that they don’t even seek caresses. “
Amazon said it kept notifications indistinct for privacy reasons and used a camera surveillance formula called “Remote Assistant” to stumble upon staff within 6 feet of an inflamed employee for at least 15 minutes for contact search purposes. asked poor health workers about contacts outside of work, adding car sharing and cohabitation, and that only a small proportion of staff met those criteria.
But that did little to dispel the fear of some workers like Jumpp, who said they felt the need to take the issues into their own hands.
“I hope the staff senses that they have strength in the numbers and that they don’t want to have as much confidence as a company will do the right thing,” Jumpp said.
Amazon might not offer much in terms of coronavirus case data, however, many local fitnesss are doing little to replace the situation.
In Pennsylvania, the state conducts inspections or collects data on outbreaks in warehouses that are “food-related,” according to interviews with state press secretary Nate Wardle and undersecretary of the press Maggi Mumma. knowledge accumulates, they said.
Jumpp said his organization had recorded at least cases in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania.
Other states have done more and some countries have been with Amazon’s reaction and communication.
A spokesman for Middlesex County, New Jersey, said he conducted a “thorough investigation” into Amazon’s amenities in the cities of Carteret and Edison last April, after staff documented more than 44 cases between them and gave the control express orders to ensure a “safe and healthy paint environment. “The county tracked in May to locate that Amazon had implemented CDC guidelines, as noted.
Lisa Brodsky, director of public fitness at Scott County, Minnesota, said Amazon calls her team every Thursday for percentage data on instances “and they’ve been great. “Amazon’s Shakopee facility in Scott County had at least 186 inflamed instances of Covid-19 as of September 8, according to data from the state branch of fitness. The settlement rate exceeded the community’s infection rate, according to an internal memorandum received through Bloomberg News, against the company’s repeated public statements, adding to NBC News: that the instances in its services across the United States matched those in the local U. S. area.
However, in Kenosha, where Amazon was crowded from appearance to appearance in a tornado shelter, email records show that fitness branch officials were frustrated by Amazon’s “less than useful” attitude in March.
Several weeks later, on May 9, Freiheit, Kenosha County’s fitness director, reiterated her frustration with Amazon, saying the company would only provide data on cases involving Kenosha residents. and the total number of cases at the establishment.
According to Jumpp’s count, Kenosha’s MKE1 facility accounts for the third largest number of people inflamed in an Amazon distribution center.
County officials visited MKE1 last May and Freiheit told Amazon that “what we saw was positive,” but asked the company to be more transparent with its inflamed cases.
Six weeks later, Freiheit lamented Amazon’s lack of transparency.
“We’re having trouble communicating with Amazon again,” he wrote on July 15. “We have to find contacts and we have gained a communication that provides us with the names of close contacts. “
Amazon said it has introduced a voluntary detection program at Kenosha’s facility.
Several occupational fitness experts have singled out OSHA for not tracking Covid-19 epidemics in the office and for not penalizing non-working corporations.
Workplace protection criteria in the United States focus more on injury in the office than on preventing the spread of infectious diseases. Positive cases reported to the local fitness of coronavirus tests in the office require registration of a person’s position of residence, but not at work, despite the likelihood that offices will be a major vector for contracting the virus, in accordance with the rules of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“If we want to prevent this virus, we will need to be able to protect employees together and we want to know when others are exposed to work,” said Terri Gerstein, principal investigator at the Institute of Economic Policy, an employee – funded expert group and director of the Harvard Law School’s State and Local Labor and Life Program Compliance Project. “It’s just one layer after another of inadequacy in terms of taking the necessary measures to protect others. “
OSHA calls on corporations to report work-related ailments and injuries, but studies have shown that employers report them insufficiently. has become inflamed at work.
Although OSHA well collects knowledge about outbreaks in the workplace, the law enforcement firm does not have the means to penalize employers because it does not have an express rule on infectious disease protection personnel. However, federal workplace protection regulations take years to enact and efforts were stopped after President Donald Trump took office in January 2017. Attempts to introduce an emergency rule on infectious diseases were also set aside when the pandemic reached the United States.
“OSHA has been a very weak agency, however, this administration has chosen not to use some of OSHA’s toughest tools,” said David Michaels, who was director of OSHA during the Obama administration, referring to the agency’s failure to introduce a disease rule.
Robert Harrison, a clinical professor of occupational medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said the pandemic “could have occurred at a worse time for the fitness of American workers. “
“Federal OSHA is sleeping,” he added. The pandemic and its effects are the biggest public fitness crisis of my life and if there has ever been a time for a federal OSHA to be awake, competitive and alert, it is now.
In lieu of regulations, OSHA issued rules for employers on how to hire Covid-19 personnel.
OSHA argues that these guidelines, as well as existing law, are sufficient for workers; however, it has had little application. The firm has won more than 10069 coronavirus-related court cases since March, but has only issued 24 subpoenas.
“It’s ridiculous,” Harrison said, “This practically doesn’t make sense as a means of deterrence. “
Ministry of Labour spokesman Sabin Sidney said OSHA inspections had “helped cover more than 580,000 workers. “
“OSHA continues to address and respond to complaints, and will take steps to combat harmful workplaces by adding the app, ifArray,” he said.
Some state hard-working departments, adding Kentucky, rely on their own public aptitude regulations on OSHA regulations to hold corporations accountable for office epidemics.
“Under OSHA rules, if we need to close a company that has no employees, it must obtain a court order,” said Amy Cubbage, general suggestion of the Kentucky Labor Cabinet, a state administrative body. “But under public aptitude laws, we can avoid operations if necessary. “
State and local fitness adheres to CDC rules for monitoring the pandemic. Many states have laws that require doctors and labs to report cases, however, the popular form issued through the CDC for this purpose does not require the patient’s office or profession unless the patient is a worker.
“The concept that commercial data is not captured when Covid’s knowledge is collected from any source is absurd. It’s just crazy and it’s a terrible missed opportunity,” said Gerstein of Harvard and the Institute of Economic Policy.
Many have begun to act. States such as Michigan and Washington monitor data on patient occupations and jobs. Attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts have put employees’ lines of defense against coronaviruses in position. In July, Virginia became the first state to adopt defense regulations for staff several others are running under a similar law and more than a dozen states have expanded the number of employees in reaction to Covid-19.
In early May, thirteen attorney generals called on Amazon and Whole Foods to strengthen measures to protect workers’ fitness and protection from the pandemic and to provide states, among other things, with knowledge about infections and deaths of their workers.
Amazon said it responded to elected officials and held briefings with governors, state fitness, and OSHA.
There’s no sign of slowing down. Amazon is hiring thousands more employees across the country, and with the demise of federal stimulus controls, the depression for physical fitness benefits is unlikely to end soon.
“I feel like we’re just farm animals to sacrifice,” said Anjlia Mathlin, a JAX1 worker in Jacksonville, Florida, whose wife also works at Amazon.
William Stolz, a painter at Amazon’s MSP1 warehouse in Minnesota, said painters had become “insensitive” to notifications. He noted that the $2 supplement consistent with the “hero’s salary” hour presented through Amazon to paint the pandemic when it started in mid-March did. not last long.
“We stopped being heroes in June,” Stoltz said.