I think it’s easy to make Amazon and Jeff Bezos look like the bad guys in this situation. I will admit, this article was eye-opening. I was unaware that Amazon had so many confirmed COVID-19 cases among their employees. But from an ethical standpoint, I don’t think this situation is specific to Amazon. The corona virus outbreak is an unprecedented 21st century pandemic. The entire world was unprepared. It’s unfair to blame Amazon for not handling the situation correctly. The article itself states, “Amazon has had to adapt on the fly to an unprecedented pandemic, often without clear guidance from the federal government.” Every company was confronted with the same dilemma: send their employees home and lose money or take health and safety precautions and hope for the best. I can understand why Amazon executives chose the latter.
Most people don’t have the option or the luxury to stay home. They can’t afford to not go to work. However, Amazon is in a unique situation where they can afford to lose money. Their employees could stay home with paid leave and it wouldn’t make a dent in a company “worth more than $1 trillion.”
The context of Amazon mistreating their employees in the past changes things, but, while reading this article, I couldn’t help but feel that Amazon is being used as a scapegoat for an otherwise frustrating situation out of anyone’s control. Should Amazon stop production altogether to protect the health of their employees? I don’t see that happening. In hindsight, they should’ve taken more necessary health and safety precautions, but from the article, “disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer ‘are standard across our network.’ The company also made changes to allow for social distancing, including scrapping group staff meetings during shifts, staggering break times and spreading out chairs in break rooms.”
It’s unfortunate and sad that so many Amazon employees have died due to COVID-19. It is also sad that so many Amazon employees have contracted COVID-19, but proportionally, 900 cases out of 840,000 employees was a statistic I didn’t see mentioned in the article.
Ultimately, Amazon was unprepared and slow to act during the outbreak. Is this morally wrong? Objectively, yes. But ignorance of COVID-19’s severity makes the situation less one-sided. Our federal government was also slow to act, making the outbreak seem less worrisome from the beginning.
Amazon has been morally wrong in the past when it comes to the protection of their employees. I personally think tracking an employee’s productivity by the minute is a work environment reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984, but that’s a different topic.
I believe this specific situation is being used as confirmation bias. It’s being used to further the narrative that Amazon doesn’t care about the well being of it’s employees. True or not, every company is struggling to find the correct answers to an unprecedented global pandemic, not just Amazon. Protecting the health of their employees while simultaneously providing the entire world with a safe way to order food and supplies during quarantine is no easy task. I don’t blame Amazon for trying.