Amazon worker fired for starting walk out

The worker who started the walk out at the Amazon Staten Island facility was let go from the company. Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous, Brian Sozzi and Alexis Keenan discuss the details.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Switching gears, Amazon finds itself in hot water this morning. I want to bring in our very own Alexis Keenan. Alexis, this is just-- it's not a good look, not a good look for Amazon this morning.

ALEXIS KEENAN: Not a good look, and a lot of bad press is coming out of this for Amazon, unfortunately. One of their workers in Staten Island, he was a fulfillment center assistant manager. He was fired yesterday after staging a walkout in protest of the health conditions that were present there in that facility. His name is Chris Smalls, and he called the conditions, according to Bloomberg, horrific. He's been with the company for four years. He said that the workers were having to do their jobs with no masks, no gloves. And also, there were no masks or gloves for the cleaning crew's that were cleaning the facilities.

Now, he said he reported to management back after the first confirmed COVID-19 case at the facility on March 11th. He said he escalated his concerns about what he called the domino effect of people getting sick at the facility. He also had one of his own employees in his department that he was in close contact with test positive for the illness. Now, he said at that time that he was offered unpaid leave, which he said he could not afford. And he said at the time that he had the choice between really getting paid-- getting a paycheck-- and putting his other co-workers at risk. So he said that he staged this protest on behalf of all of the workers at Amazon.

Now, Amazon has since said-- they've issued a statement saying that Smalls was given paid leave after staging this walkout and that he did so while he was on the paid leave, and so that's the reason that Amazon is saying that he violated the company's social distancing guidelines and also his own 14 day quarantine by showing up and doing this protest. Here's what they said, Brian. "Mr. Smalls received multiple warnings for violating social distancing guidelines and putting the safety of others at risk. Despite that instruction to stay home with pay, he came site on March 30th, further putting the teams at risk." They say, "this is unacceptable, and we have terminated his employment as a result of these multiple safety issues."

Now, the New York Attorney General's office, who we're going to talk with later today on Yahoo Finance, she has issued a statement calling Amazon's behavior here disgraceful, immoral, and inhumane, and she said she's looking into legal options to see if there's something that can be done about the situation there.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah. Alexis saw Letitia James saying she's now asking the National Labor Relations Board to investigate that firing, but I also want to talk about what is happening or may be happening very soon at Whole Foods. We know also owned by Amazon, it sounds like workers there are staging a walkout because they believe they too are not being given the tools they need to keep themselves safe, including sick pay if they do indeed need to quarantine themselves. What do you know?

ALEXIS KEENAN: Right. So there is a workers group organized called Whole Worker that advocates on behalf of Whole Foods workers, but again more problems for Amazon here with Amazon being the parent company. They want paid leave, as you said, for those who have to isolate or self quarantine. They are also looking for some other benefits I should also mention that Amazon did say in its response to the Smalls issue that they have raised worker pay, at least for Amazon workers, $2 and offering double overtime as well. They say that they're doing temperature checks now for any person, not just employees, who have to enter their facilities, that they're doing triple cleanings, and also procuring available safety supplies.

But you know when you look at that language of Amazon trying to procure supplies, we would hope that they would have maybe been in early on this and able to get the supplies they needed for their workers, but it doesn't sound there. And you know, I've asked them this morning repeatedly whether or not some of those things are showing up, and I haven't gotten an answer yet, but it does sound like the workers are not yet wearing the kind of protective clothing that we've all been hearing about as necessary in order to protect workers and ourselves, really.

BRIAN SOZZI: Alexis, certainly a PR nightmare for Amazon. Any sense if they could bring this employee back?

ALEXIS KEENAN: You know, that's another question that I put out to them this morning, and I'm hoping for an answer. Perhaps, if they can work something out, maybe he'll be invited back, but at this point, I just don't know the answer to that.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right. Alexis Keenan. We'll leave it there. Thank you so much.