Another Fresno Amazon employee positive for coronavirus, 9th worker overall at site
Two more employees at Fresno’s Amazon warehouse tested positive for COVID-19 this week, bringing the total to at least nine cases of COVID-19 in the south Fresno facility.
Fresno’s Amazon facility reported its eighth case Tuesday and ninth case Wednesday in text messages to employees.
“We continue to take measures to keep you safe: implementing mandatory social distancing, requiring all to wear a face covering, conducting temperature checks, and doing more frequent cleanings,” the latest text message reads.
The company notified employees of additional cases on April 8, May 5, May 8, May 14, May 19, May 20 and May 23, The Fresno Bee corroborated with screenshots of messages from the company to four employees. Amazon officials have said they notify employees of positive cases as soon as they learn of them, although they declined to provide the total number of infections at the warehouse.
“Like most global companies, we’ve had employees affected by this, and we’re doing all that we can to protect our employees and take the proper precautions as stated in WHO guidelines,” Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards told The Fresno Bee.
She said the company planned to invest approximately $4 billion from April to June on coronavirus safety precautions. Those include “investments in personal protective equipment, enhanced cleaning of our facilities, less efficient process paths that better allow for effective social distancing, higher wages for hourly teams, and developing our own COVID-19 testing capabilities.”
The company screens people for fevers as they begin their shifts and has provided masks to all employees they must wear at all times.
Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, the Fresno warehouse has hired more than 1,200 new employees.
Workers receive comprehensive health benefits and anyone diagnosed with COVID-19 will receive up to two weeks of paid time off. Amazon also increased pay for hourly employees by $2 per hour in the U.S. and doubled the regular hourly base pay for every overtime hour worked.
Time-off issues
But unlike in April, when unpaid time off was unlimited, employees can now risk their job if they take off time they have not accrued.
One worker, who asked not to be named because she feared losing her job, said people show up to work sick because they don’t want to lose their jobs.
“Each message that they send out at the bottom says, ‘if you feel sick stay home.’ They don’t include, if you feel sick stay home – but you have to use your (sick) time. And if you don’t have any time then you get 1.5 points for not going to work. Once you reach 6 points, you’re terminated,” she said.
The same employee said that when she tried to email human resources, the message bounced back because the inbox was full, according to a screenshot she shared with The Bee.
Anastacia Marissa Bonner, another Fresno Amazon employee, said it made sense to cap unpaid time off.
“A lot of employees are mad that Amazon is not giving us unpaid time off anymore,” she said. “But they literally do not have to do that. It’s easier to face reality than to expect a business to allow us to stay home when they could just as easily fire us and hire people who don’t care about the virus or don’t believe it’s real.”
Destiney Villegas, another Amazon employee, has taken a leave of absence because she did not want to risk bringing the virus home to her kids. But going weeks without a paycheck has also taken its toll.
“I’m struggling so much,” she said. “But I’d rather put my family and my health and safety first than going to work and getting sick.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 2:45 PM.
