According to their colleagues, two Amazon employees died at the company’s facility in Bessemer, Alabama. Following the denial of a sick leave application by one of the deceased employees, the employee suffered from a stroke and subsequently died ‘on the job,’ according to reports.
In addition, one of the employees said that the firm instructed them to continue working despite the man’s death.
In an interview with the workers’ rights organization “More Perfect Union,” the co-workers described how their co-workers died within hours of each other on November 28 and 29, with one passing away at their workplace and the other passing away while being transferred from work in an ambulance, according to MSN News.
EXCLUSIVE: Two Amazon workers died within hours of each other at the company’s Bessemer warehouse last month.
One was denied sick leave before suffering a fatal stroke.
Workers tell @GrimKim that 6 people have died at the facility this year and Amazon is trying to cover it up. pic.twitter.com/Jo0nAyi82O
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) December 22, 2021
“He had gone to HR and asked, ‘I’m not feeling well, may I possibly be allowed to go home?'” recalled Isaiah Thomas, an Amazon day-shift employee. “He couldn’t go home because he didn’t receive sufficient [unpaid leave off].
Thus, basically informing him that he has two options: either return home and risk losing his job or remain here and continue working despite the agony. Thomas explained that Amazon warehouse workers were afraid of getting fired if they took more time off than their allocated days. “And that’s exactly what he did,” Thomas stated.’
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“I should have just let him go home; he would have been celebrating Christmas with his family right now,” Thomas explained. In 2021, employees report that six individuals have died at the Bessemer site alone and that the firm is attempting to cover up the deaths.
“Amazon employee Perry Connelly said how the company’s security guards would come around and instruct individuals not to talk about it before returning to work. When one of the employees inquired about what had transpired, the manager said, “I have no idea what you are talking about?”
Amazon workers in Bessemer led a historic campaign this year to unionize with @RWDSU in response to dangerous working conditions and unfair scheduling.
Amazon illegally interfered in the union election and the results were thrown out by the NLRB. pic.twitter.com/ddWw6m8emS
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) December 22, 2021
The manager went on to say that individuals who had been in close contact with the deceased employee had been traumatized and wanted to return home. Their supervisors denied their petitions, who instructed them to continue working.
According to Connelly, “There is no downtime, there is no minute of silence, there is no time to sit and say a prayer.” The firm views them as disposable cogs, he continued. “You’re just a shell of a person.” As soon as that corpse is depleted, they would bring in another to complete the task,’ he explained.
In April, workers at the same factory attempted to form a union, protesting unsafe working conditions and unjust scheduling practices.
The employees were defeated to unionize by 1798 votes to 738 votes. Although the National Labor Relations Board eventually ruled that Amazon had improperly interfered with the union vote by intimidating workers, it ordered a new vote on November 29 and ordered a reversal of the decision.
On the same day, it was announced that one of the workers had perished. According to research, the company has been extensively attacked for having a high incidence of injuries in its warehouses, which is purportedly an 80 percent greater rate of major accidents than in other storage facilities.
Amazon’s lengthy history of prioritizing profits above employees is precisely why its workers in Bessemer formed and attempted to join a union, according to Faiz Shakir, chief executive of the More Perfect Union, which was quoted in the Mashable article.
Employees at the Bessemer site will have another chance to vote in 2022 on whether or not to create the company’s first union in the United States.
A panicking Amazon delivery driver was ordered to keep working through tornado warnings or she'd lose her job, text messages show, highlighting a lack of training in the online retailer's disjointed delivery network where it's not clear who is the boss.https://t.co/wNXwmCy2N7 pic.twitter.com/iYycajVpsY
— Spencer 'tweets 4 free' Soper (@spencersoper) December 17, 2021
The corporation’s work policies were also questioned when many employees said that they refused to leave their jobs while a fatal tornado neared their facility in Illinois.
Six Amazon employees were murdered when the tornado destroyed the warehouse. The final text a worker wrote to his wife, who pleaded with him to return home, was “Amazon won’t let me go.” As we previously reported,
The corporation also came under fire after allegations surfaced that it had prohibited personnel from carrying their mobile phones. In contrast, on the job might have alerted them to the impending disaster and given them critical information and time to react.
Because they were forbidden access to emergency weather notifications and contact with family members, many employees were unprepared for what was to come and were caught off guard.
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