Coronavirus in Amazon's Warehouses

There's wildcat strikes; since the NLRB has been non-functional for 35 years, wildcat strikes are all that is possible. So far, one leader has been fired. I expect this will escalate to a full lockout.

How are they going to find people to work in coronavirus hotspots?

Additional reporting, as of May 22, 2020:

Karen Weise of the New York Times reports on Amazon's Hazelton warehouse:
In the less than two months since then, the warehouse in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania has become Amazon’s biggest Covid-19 hot spot. More employees at AVP1 have been infected by the coronavirus than at any of Amazon’s roughly 500 other facilities in the United States.

A 60 Minutes television report by Lesley Stahl, How Amazon is handling the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon's Senior Vice President “Dave” Clark interviewed, along with several Amazon employees and contractors. Mr. Clark claims that the infection is not spreading at Amazon, refuses to disclose the number of infected employees. My notes from the report:
Stahl: So how many positive cases have you discovered at Amazon?

Clark: The actual total number of cases isn’t particularly useful because it’s relative to the size of the building and in the overall community infection rate.

Stahl, nonplussed: So you don’t know or you're not going to tell us how many cases have been discovered?

Clark: We know. I just don’t have the number right on me at the moment because it’s not a particularly useful number.

(Commentary on facility in Hazelton PA with 70 coronavirus cases. There is also a Cargill meatpacking plant in town which had to shut down for sanitizing – talk about a community at risk!)
Stahl: Hazelton PA. Your warehouse there seems to be a hotspot, a major hotspot. Why not shut down that facility and sanitize, sanitize that building? [per CDC guidelines]

Clark: We sanitize that building 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We have misting crews in there every day, we have janitorial cleaning every day…

Stahl: why the reluctance to shut down a plant where there are many cases?

Clark: It’s not a reluctance, just not effective.

Stahl points out that CDC guidelines do not agree.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The General Intelligence of Robots

A Grand Unified Theory of Bad New Economy Firms

Why ChatGPT?