Amazon workers on a Staten Island warehouse strike on Amazon demanded that the facility be shut down and cleaned up after it was tested positive for the corona virus in New York on March 30, 2020.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images
California State Attorney General Xavier Beckera is seeking to force Amazon to cooperate with a month-long investigation into the treatment of warehouse workers during corona virus infections.
In the spring, Beckera began a study of working conditions at Amazon’s California warehouses during epidemics. As part of the investigation, Beckera contacted Amazon on August 19 to gather additional information about data, policies, procedures and practices related to the corona virus.
Now, Beckeray has filed a lawsuit filed Monday alleging that Amazon failed to respond adequately to a subpoena of its office and asked the Sacramento County High Court judge to order Amazon comply with his claims.
“It’s been almost six months since the attorney general’s initial request to Amazon,” the filing says. “Slowly dropping information from Amazon is not an adequate response.”
Without adequate information, it has been filed that the company cannot “adequately determine” whether it complies with California laws to protect its workers from the corona virus.
Amazon representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Amazon warehouse workers have been regularly criticizing the company’s response to the epidemic for the past several months, claiming it has failed to adequately protect against the corona virus. Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos have denied the allegations, saying the company has gone “too far” to protect workers.
Amazon revealed in October that from March 1 to September 19, nearly 20,000 leading line employees signed with Covid-19. The company says the infection rate among employees is 42% lower than expected compared to the general population rate in the United States.
In the subpoena, Beckeray requested specific details from Amazon about its sick leave policies, cleaning procedures and “source data” on the number of corona virus infections and deaths at its facilities in the state. Amazon provided the office with “small amounts of accurate information,” according to information filed in court.
The attorney general files that he “learned a lot from media reports and news releases directly from Amazon.”
As the spread of the corona virus continues to increase across the country, the information requested by the office from Amazon is increasingly important. The virus has now killed more than 16.4 million people and more than 300,000 in the United States, according to NBC News.
“It is important to know whether these workers receive the protections of the work they receive under the law,” Beckera said in a statement. “Time is of the essence.”
After electing Joe Biden as president to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Beckara is set to play a key role in the country’s response to the corona virus epidemic.