A worker at Amazon’s Staten Island fulfillment center in New York has died of COVID-19, the company confirmed. The unidentified worker reportedly received a positive test result on April 11 and had been quarantined.
The worker’s family notified Amazon of the death on Monday.
"We are deeply saddened by the loss of an associate at our site in Staten Island, NY. His family and loved ones are in our thoughts, and we are supporting his fellow colleagues," Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski said in a statement.
The death comes amid protests by the company’s workers concerning workplace safety. At least three employees at different warehouses across the U.S. have been fired since April. One worker, Christian Smalls, who led a protest against Amazon in March, worked at the Staten Island facility.
Last week, Tim Bray, former vice president of Amazon Web Services, left the company after five years, explaining in a blog post that he quit “in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19.”
Amazon responded to Bray’s posts stating, “We support every employee's right to criticize their employer's working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies. We terminated these employees for repeatedly violating internal policies."
Amazon has been under scrutiny since the end of April when the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) added five of the company’s overseas operations to its annual blacklist of “notorious markets.”
According to the USTR, U.S. businesses have complained that consumers cannot easily distinguish the sellers for products being sold on Amazon’s overseas websites. In addition, it was reported the process to remove platforms selling counterfeit products was “lengthy and burdensome.”
Amazon has called its inclusion on USTR’s blacklist a “personal vendetta” and a “purely political act” by the Trump administration.
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee has asked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to testify before Congress to respond to accusations the company abuses its online retail power, mistreats warehouse workers and hurts small businesses.
While other big tech company CEOs have appeared before Congress, Bezos has not. The committee has threatened him with a subpoena if he does not appear.
“Although we expect that you will testify on a voluntary basis, we reserve the right to report compulsory process if necessary,” the committee’s letter to Bezos stated.
