Two more Fresno employees test positive at Amazon warehouse
Two more employees at Fresno’s Amazon warehouse tested positive for COVID-19 this week, bringing the total to at least 15 cases in the facility.
The giant Amazon warehouse in south Fresno reported one case Wednesday and another case Friday through a company app called A to Z, where employees receive work notifications.
“We were recently notified that an individual who works at FAT1 has received a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis,” the message sent to employees June 19 reads. “Consistent with our processes, the site continues to undergo enhanced daily cleanings. The affected individual was last onsite more than 14 days ago, so contact tracing is not needed.”
The company notified employees of additional cases on April 8, May 5, May 8, May 14, May 19, May 20, May 23, May 26, May 27, May 30, June 2, June 5 and June 10, The Fresno Bee corroborated with screenshots of messages from the company to three 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.
When COVID-19 broke out in March, Amazon began paying workers an extra $2 an hour, along with double overtime pay. That ended in June. The company also ended unlimited unpaid time off in May.
Amazon tells employees to stay home if they are sick. But in order to stay home, workers have told The Bee they need to have accrued enough paid or unpaid time off. Otherwise, they risk losing their job.
Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards previously told The Fresno Bee 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.”
Amazon screens people for fevers as they begin their shifts and has provided masks to all employees they must wear at all times.
This story was originally published June 20, 2020 at 2:51 PM.