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> Despite that instruction to stay home with pay, he came on site today, March 30, further putting the teams at risk The employee was exposed to another employ

> Despite that instruction to stay home with pay, he came on site today, March 30, further putting the teams at risk The employee was exposed to another employee who tested positive for covid-19. They asked him to stay home with pay for 14 days and he came back to the building to protest, putting other employees at risk.

rohansingh 6y ago
Does Amazon's instruction to him to stay home override his rights as an employee to organize and participate in collective action? I don't actually know the answer. But in general, I'm guessing that you can't end a strike by ordering all employees to stay home and then firing them if they don't.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  I would like to add, if the quarantine order on March 30th is about the contact of March 11th, and it seems it is, and if he's the only one being quarantined, then I don't think there's any discussion about whether or not this should be in the right or in the wrong
- nabnob 6y ago
  The coronavirus gives Amazon an excuse to use to order employees to stay home if they try to organize their coworkers. It's not a coincidence that Amazon only ordered this employee to stay home after seeing that he led a strike. If Amazon actually cared about their employees' wellbeing, they would have told Smalls to stay home after he had been exposed, not more than two weeks later.
amazoniancrooks 6y ago
That's what Amazon claims anyway. Best to take that with a pinch of salt, given their track record.
- rstupek 6y ago
  I'm going to guess Amazon has it well documented and dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's
  - amazoniancrooks 6y ago
    I wouldn't be so sure. Probably well stitched up though.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    Amazon has a version of it well documented, and they have a lot to gain by presenting their own interpretation of the events.
    - delfinom 6y ago
      All they need is camera footage.
    - toasterlovin 6y ago
      So does the employee.
  - SolaceQuantum 6y ago
    Amazon was unable to appropriately document a man who was dead in a warehouse enough to get them medical help for a significant length of time.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Good ol throwaway. Make your case on a normal account.
- smachiz 6y ago
  Based on your username, have to laugh a bit when you tell us to take what the other guy says with a grain of salt.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    Yeah, imagine taking the word of a multi-billion dollar company's PR people with a grain of salt. They don't have agendas unlike throwaway accounts. At least in this case we know what both sides' interests are here!
    - smachiz 6y ago
      I think taking PR people's opinions with a grain of salt is par for the course. Re: the OP - this isn't just a throwaway account. It's a pretty obvious agenda beyond just sharing the facts.
gregjw 6y ago
What a dick!
mbostleman 6y ago
I think the key is to a) trigger emotional engagement by driving a narrative based confirmation bias in the headline, and b) still have all the facts in the story for those that will actually read it which I assume turns out to be not a large percentage of people that see the headline.
aqme28 6y ago
It raises the question of how to protest in the age of quarantine. I agree that breaking quarantine is bad, but let's look at his side of this. Amazon has the ability to shut down any protest or picket by alleging that an attendee was sick, or that a strike organizer was exposed.
- tenpies 6y ago
  It also honestly becomes a matter of national security. Amazon is crucial right now in maintaining social order. It's one thing to be quarantined at home, but to be quarantined without anything arriving to your house is a quick recipe for riots on the streets. Anyone or anything disrupting this is potentially as dangerous as a famine. I 100% sympathize with the protestor's plight, but it's an interesting situation.
  - SolaceQuantum 6y ago
    This may be a bad interpretation but- If a company functioning is a matter of national security, it should be significantly more controlled by the nation.
  - amazoniancrooks 6y ago
    This is a rather massive exaggeration. Amazon isn't the sole distributor of goods, it's certainly not too big to fail.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > to be quarantined without anything arriving to your house is a quick recipe for riots on the streets... Target, Walmart, grocery stores, etc. all are able to do curbside pickup and in many cases deliveries via stuff like Instacart. Amazon isn't the only option.
    - mynameisvlad 6y ago
      Instacart and Whole Foods employees were also striking at the same time.
dehrmann 6y ago
If it was actually on-site, yes, Amazon did the right thing. If it was by the street--somewhere any member of the public has free speech--no, but assuming he was exposed to SARS-CoV-2, going out in public is pretty messed up, and pretty hypocritical.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  It's generally legal to fire employees for "free speech" activities done outside the workplace. More morally hazardous of course, but I don't think anyone would really even challenge the cause here (it's trivially easy to argue that this behavior shows they would endanger workers within the workplace as well).
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    Even in the United States, it's typically illegal to retaliate against employees for organizing: https://www.workplacefairness.org/unions-retaliation https://www.workplacefairness.org/unions-retaliation
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Except if that free speech is an attempt to organize.
kevingadd 6y ago
He didn't put anyone at risk. His last exposure was over 2 weeks ago. Amazon is just using the pandemic as an excuse for strike-breaking.
- mzz80 6y ago
  I hope you don’t believe you can’t infect people after 2 weeks. If so, you’re contributing to the pandemic and the spread of the virus through disinformation. If a patient ever develops symptoms it could be 2 weeks or longer. If they don’t develop symptoms after the incubation period then they are still infectious.
Mizza 6y ago
Whenever there is anti-Amazon or pro-Union discussion, the first comment on HN will always be siding with management. Why is that? This obviously an illegal retaliatory firing. Amazon is running domestic sweatshops where they don't even provide basic PPE during a global pandemic, and he was the leader trying to get that gear. Seriously - what goes through the head of somebody who posts a comment siding with management in a situation like this? I literally can't understand why you'd think to post something like this, unless you're an Amazon executive or shareholder and only care about short term face/profit. Otherwise - why the reactionary take? I just find this level of obedience to authority baffling. It's endemic in the United States, which otherwise prides itself on it's "maverick" status - except when it comes to shocking levels of obedience and servitude to the police and to market forces. EDIT: I looked up this user and he is an Amazon employee, which explains this bizarre take. Given Amazon's policy of paying employees to say nice things about the company online, even when they work in unrelated departments, I think we should seriously consider warning/banning users who engage in astroturfing for their employers on HackerNews.
- jlmorton 6y ago
  > Amazon is running domestic sweatshops where they don't even provide basic PPE during a global pandemic It doesn't help your argument to frame it in hyperbolic terms. Amazon pays a minimum wage of $15/hour, every warehouse is air conditioned, they now offer paid time off to every worker who works >20 hours a week, they have substantial career advancement training and education benefits, they have health benefits and matching 401k program, 20 weeks paid parental leave. I mean, come on. There might be some legitimate problems, but when you call it a sweatshop, you've already lost the argument.
  - me_me_me 6y ago
    and they have employees pissing into bottles because toilet breaks are limited/timed/monitored. I mean, come on. What would take for you to piss into bottle at your work instead of going to toilet.
    - bbarn 6y ago
jerf 6y ago
With respect, Amazon publicly claims the employee violated quarantine. The employee publicly claims that Amazon fired them out of retaliation. From this distance, while we may all have our respective sympathies, both stories are plausible and we don't really know. It is abundantly obvious that companies generally find reasons (legitimate or otherwise) to fire those advocating for a union, but it isn't exactly unheard of for an employee knowing they are facing termination or disciplinary action for legitimate reasons to cover that over with some socially-acceptable reason like various claims of discrimination or starting a union like this, etc. It's not a secret hack nobody's ever heard of. Edit: See boiled cabbage's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059 More data can bring more clarity.
- hyperpape 6y ago
  It's also clear that Amazon has the data. If they do not choose to share it, that itself would become a form of data. - How many employees did they quarantine in that facility? - Were all employees exposed to the original worker quarantined? - How long after exposure--i.e. was Smalls later, or were others quarantined at (roughly) the same time? - Who makes the call to quarantine workers, and what discretion do they have? I don't necessarily expect Amazon to have all those facts available immediately. I do think that they must provide them if they wish to have any credibility.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  It's possible that Amazon fired the employee both for violating quarantine and out of retaliation, as the former would have provided legal cover for the latter.
CydeWeys 6y ago
Do you work for Amazon? If you do, aren't you required to disclose as such by Amazon, in addition to a disclaimer that this is your personal opinion and you are not representing Amazon's official view here, when publicly commenting on Amazon-related issues?
marcinzm 6y ago
The tested employee was last in the office March 11, 18 days ago, so any talk of this being about legitimate risk is corporate BS.

rohansingh 6y ago

Does Amazon's instruction to him to stay home override his rights as an employee to organize and participate in collective action? I don't actually know the answer. But in general, I'm guessing that you can't end a strike by ordering all employees to stay home and then firing them if they don't.

sudosysgen 6y ago
I would like to add, if the quarantine order on March 30th is about the contact of March 11th, and it seems it is, and if he's the only one being quarantined, then I don't think there's any discussion about whether or not this should be in the right or in the wrong
nabnob 6y ago
The coronavirus gives Amazon an excuse to use to order employees to stay home if they try to organize their coworkers. It's not a coincidence that Amazon only ordered this employee to stay home after seeing that he led a strike. If Amazon actually cared about their employees' wellbeing, they would have told Smalls to stay home after he had been exposed, not more than two weeks later.

amazoniancrooks 6y ago

That's what Amazon claims anyway. Best to take that with a pinch of salt, given their track record.

rstupek 6y ago
I'm going to guess Amazon has it well documented and dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's
- amazoniancrooks 6y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure. Probably well stitched up though.
- onion2k 6y ago
  Amazon has a version of it well documented, and they have a lot to gain by presenting their own interpretation of the events.
  - delfinom 6y ago
    All they need is camera footage.
  - toasterlovin 6y ago
    So does the employee.
- SolaceQuantum 6y ago
  Amazon was unable to appropriately document a man who was dead in a warehouse enough to get them medical help for a significant length of time.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
Good ol throwaway. Make your case on a normal account.
smachiz 6y ago
Based on your username, have to laugh a bit when you tell us to take what the other guy says with a grain of salt.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Yeah, imagine taking the word of a multi-billion dollar company's PR people with a grain of salt. They don't have agendas unlike throwaway accounts. At least in this case we know what both sides' interests are here!
  - smachiz 6y ago
    I think taking PR people's opinions with a grain of salt is par for the course. Re: the OP - this isn't just a throwaway account. It's a pretty obvious agenda beyond just sharing the facts.

gregjw 6y ago

What a dick!

mbostleman 6y ago

I think the key is to a) trigger emotional engagement by driving a narrative based confirmation bias in the headline, and b) still have all the facts in the story for those that will actually read it which I assume turns out to be not a large percentage of people that see the headline.

aqme28 6y ago

It raises the question of how to protest in the age of quarantine. I agree that breaking quarantine is bad, but let's look at his side of this. Amazon has the ability to shut down any protest or picket by alleging that an attendee was sick, or that a strike organizer was exposed.

tenpies 6y ago
It also honestly becomes a matter of national security. Amazon is crucial right now in maintaining social order. It's one thing to be quarantined at home, but to be quarantined without anything arriving to your house is a quick recipe for riots on the streets. Anyone or anything disrupting this is potentially as dangerous as a famine. I 100% sympathize with the protestor's plight, but it's an interesting situation.
- SolaceQuantum 6y ago
  This may be a bad interpretation but- If a company functioning is a matter of national security, it should be significantly more controlled by the nation.
- amazoniancrooks 6y ago
  This is a rather massive exaggeration. Amazon isn't the sole distributor of goods, it's certainly not too big to fail.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > to be quarantined without anything arriving to your house is a quick recipe for riots on the streets... Target, Walmart, grocery stores, etc. all are able to do curbside pickup and in many cases deliveries via stuff like Instacart. Amazon isn't the only option.
  - mynameisvlad 6y ago
    Instacart and Whole Foods employees were also striking at the same time.

dehrmann 6y ago

If it was actually on-site, yes, Amazon did the right thing. If it was by the street--somewhere any member of the public has free speech--no, but assuming he was exposed to SARS-CoV-2, going out in public is pretty messed up, and pretty hypocritical.

bpodgursky 6y ago
It's generally legal to fire employees for "free speech" activities done outside the workplace. More morally hazardous of course, but I don't think anyone would really even challenge the cause here (it's trivially easy to argue that this behavior shows they would endanger workers within the workplace as well).
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Even in the United States, it's typically illegal to retaliate against employees for organizing: https://www.workplacefairness.org/unions-retaliation https://www.workplacefairness.org/unions-retaliation
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Except if that free speech is an attempt to organize.

kevingadd 6y ago

He didn't put anyone at risk. His last exposure was over 2 weeks ago. Amazon is just using the pandemic as an excuse for strike-breaking.

mzz80 6y ago
I hope you don’t believe you can’t infect people after 2 weeks. If so, you’re contributing to the pandemic and the spread of the virus through disinformation. If a patient ever develops symptoms it could be 2 weeks or longer. If they don’t develop symptoms after the incubation period then they are still infectious.

Mizza 6y ago

Whenever there is anti-Amazon or pro-Union discussion, the first comment on HN will always be siding with management. Why is that? This obviously an illegal retaliatory firing. Amazon is running domestic sweatshops where they don't even provide basic PPE during a global pandemic, and he was the leader trying to get that gear. Seriously - what goes through the head of somebody who posts a comment siding with management in a situation like this? I literally can't understand why you'd think to post something like this, unless you're an Amazon executive or shareholder and only care about short term face/profit. Otherwise - why the reactionary take? I just find this level of obedience to authority baffling. It's endemic in the United States, which otherwise prides itself on it's "maverick" status - except when it comes to shocking levels of obedience and servitude to the police and to market forces. EDIT: I looked up this user and he is an Amazon employee, which explains this bizarre take. Given Amazon's policy of paying employees to say nice things about the company online, even when they work in unrelated departments, I think we should seriously consider warning/banning users who engage in astroturfing for their employers on HackerNews.

jlmorton 6y ago
> Amazon is running domestic sweatshops where they don't even provide basic PPE during a global pandemic It doesn't help your argument to frame it in hyperbolic terms. Amazon pays a minimum wage of $15/hour, every warehouse is air conditioned, they now offer paid time off to every worker who works >20 hours a week, they have substantial career advancement training and education benefits, they have health benefits and matching 401k program, 20 weeks paid parental leave. I mean, come on. There might be some legitimate problems, but when you call it a sweatshop, you've already lost the argument.
- me_me_me 6y ago
  and they have employees pissing into bottles because toilet breaks are limited/timed/monitored. I mean, come on. What would take for you to piss into bottle at your work instead of going to toilet.
  - bbarn 6y ago

jerf 6y ago

With respect, Amazon publicly claims the employee violated quarantine. The employee publicly claims that Amazon fired them out of retaliation. From this distance, while we may all have our respective sympathies, both stories are plausible and we don't really know. It is abundantly obvious that companies generally find reasons (legitimate or otherwise) to fire those advocating for a union, but it isn't exactly unheard of for an employee knowing they are facing termination or disciplinary action for legitimate reasons to cover that over with some socially-acceptable reason like various claims of discrimination or starting a union like this, etc. It's not a secret hack nobody's ever heard of. Edit: See boiled cabbage's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059 More data can bring more clarity.

hyperpape 6y ago
It's also clear that Amazon has the data. If they do not choose to share it, that itself would become a form of data. - How many employees did they quarantine in that facility? - Were all employees exposed to the original worker quarantined? - How long after exposure--i.e. was Smalls later, or were others quarantined at (roughly) the same time? - Who makes the call to quarantine workers, and what discretion do they have? I don't necessarily expect Amazon to have all those facts available immediately. I do think that they must provide them if they wish to have any credibility.
gamblor956 6y ago
It's possible that Amazon fired the employee both for violating quarantine and out of retaliation, as the former would have provided legal cover for the latter.

CydeWeys 6y ago

Do you work for Amazon? If you do, aren't you required to disclose as such by Amazon, in addition to a disclaimer that this is your personal opinion and you are not representing Amazon's official view here, when publicly commenting on Amazon-related issues?

marcinzm 6y ago

The tested employee was last in the office March 11, 18 days ago, so any talk of this being about legitimate risk is corporate BS.