Tell Amazon: Give ALL Workers 100% Paid Leave NOW and Tell Us Your Plans

Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon

As COVID-19 spreads, Amazon is again failing to protect our health - as workers, neighbors, customers - by failing to offer every person who works there 100% paid leave to stay home if they need to, and by failing to tell us what their plans are if COVID-19 disrupts their operations. Current research suggests that COVID-19 can live on cardboard for up to 24 hours and on plastic for up to three days. As a trillion-dollar corporation, owned by the richest person on the planet, Amazon can and should put public health before their own profits and market share. It's dangerous and wrong that Amazon hasn't made it easier for people to stay home nor told us - workers, customers, small-business sellers, and neighbors - what to expect if Amazon workers or facilities are exposed to COVID-19. We deserve better - join us in telling CEO Jeff Bezos what Amazon must do right now.
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To: Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon
From: [Your Name]

Amazon is failing to protect our health - as customers, workers, and neighbors - by not telling us what their plans are if facilities are contaminated, or suspected of being contaminated. Amazon has a responsibility to us all.

One of the biggest companies on the planet refuses to do the right thing by thousands of employees who are working tirelessly to ensure millions of customers get their packages.

Even more, Amazon has closed its offices and told SOME of its employees to work from home: mostly the better paid corporate employees with desk jobs. But even faced with an international public health epidemic, Amazon refuses to give ALL workers paid leave.

Many fulfillment center employees and delivery drivers don't have the option of working from home -- but that doesn’t mean Amazon should risk everyone's health, or workers'. If Amazon workers don't have fully paid leave, it means we can't feed our families or pay our bills.

We demand that Amazon take action to protect us all:

Close Amazon facilities at the first question of contamination to protect public health, including the thousands of people who work in the facilities.

Make plans public in advance so everyone - workers, neighbors, sellers, customers, public officials - can know what to expect.

Fully paid leave for all people whose work is disrupted by closures.

Cover testing and health care for all workers who have possibly been exposed.

Provide 100% paid leave to EVERY SINGLE PERSON who works for Amazon, including during any quarantine period for workers with immediate family members who have shown symptoms of coronavirus.

Provide fully paid family leave for people who miss work because of school closures for their children, exposed sick or hospitalized family members.

Ensure everyone working directly or indirectly for Amazon has unlimited “time off task” to take care of their bodies (including hydrate sufficiently, and go to the bathroom) and to wash their hands, as often as needed.

Extend these benefits to ALL people who work - direct and indirectly - for every Amazon property, subsidiary, contractor and subcontractor, including Whole Foods, delivery service partners, Ring, campus food services and facility cleaners -- every single person.

Because the threat of deportation is scaring some immigrants from seeking testing and care they may need - and because the camps on the border were already a threat to the health of the people there, and both of those conditions are now an even greater risk to everyone, Amazon should end its contracts with ICE and Palantir immediately.

Because Amazon’s dirty logistics infrastructure has already polluted our air, likely contributing to extraordinarily high rates of asthma and asthma increases our vulnerability to COVID-19, Amazon has a particular responsibility to funnel resources into testing, protections, and treatment around coronavirus. Amazon should work with local health departments to fund what’s needed now.

This moment demonstrates how essential it is that Amazon pay its fair share in taxes -- not drain public funds through subsidies -- so that we have robust public resources to address coronavirus at the local, state, and national levels.