A worker in Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to an employee at the facility.
The positive test was shared among a small group of supervisors at a meeting late Tuesday morning — all while the facility has remained open for business as usual, Chris Smalls, a worried management assistant at the facility, told The Post.
“They don’t have people’s best interests in mind. It’s irresponsible and inhumane to have us keep working there,” Smalls said. “We’re going to be a second wave [of the outbreak]. I understand we’re essential to our communities, but we’re not helping out the community if we’re carrying the virus.”
“It can definitely travel to drivers and other people down the line. If the sort centers are infected, then, yeah, you got a problem and it can go to customers. It’s a domino effect.”
“We are supporting the individual who is recovering. We are following all guidelines from local officials and are taking extreme measures to ensure the safety of employees at our site,” Amazon said in a statement confirming the positive test.
The infected employee was last at work on March 11 and is currently quarantined after receiving medical care, according to the e-commerce giant.
The company did not address why the facility remained open — or detail any additional cleaning procedures — but said it has advised any workers who were in close contact with the employee to stay home and self-quarantine for 14 days.
The infected worker hadn’t been at the fulfillment center in about a week, Smalls said — but at a facility with more than 2,500 full-time employees, Smalls feared that an impending outbreak is inevitable.
Workers come in close contact with each other as part of the nature of the shipping work and frequently eat next to one another in a shared cafeteria, he said.
When an Amazon employee tested positive for the virus at the company’s warehouse in Queens, Amazon told The Atlantic that the site had been cleaned daily and was temporarily shut down for “additional sanitation.”
Smalls said it was unclear why similar procedures weren’t taken on Staten Island, other than pressure to meet production targets. He told The Post he would be rallying against unsafe work conditions outside the warehouse in Bloomfield on Wednesday morning.
The company on March 11 announced that all employees either diagnosed with the coronavirus or who self-quarantine due to possible exposure will receive two weeks’ paid time off during the global pandemic.
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March 25, 2020 at 05:35AM
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Amazon worker in Staten Island warehouse tests positive for coronavirus - New York Post
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