Amazon Lawsuits

Do you work for Amazon or has Amazon wrongfully terminated you?

Amazon was started 26 years ago. Amazon had humble beginnings in a garage to growing quickly as the top e-commerce site in the world. It undercuts its competitors with price, shipping and customer service. All of these savings are made up somewhere and it seems based on past lawsuits that this is how they make it up with mistreating employees.

The company has a long history of mistreating its workers. See a letter from many United States Senators here as well as the full text below:

Dear Chair Burrows,

Following repeated reports of the mistreatment of pregnant employees, I write to request that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) take all appropriate steps to investigate substantial and credible allegations that Amazon systematically denies reasonable accommodations for pregnant employees at its fulfillment centers. In particular, I ask the Commission to investigate Amazon’s (1) failure to provide adequate modification of job duties with regard to physically strenuous workplace duties that may threaten the health and safety of pregnant workers; and (2) failure to allow pregnant workers to take time off without punishment for pregnancy-related medical needs, both of which may violate the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and/or Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Nationwide, Amazon operates roughly 110 fulfillment centers. The physically demanding working conditions in these facilities have been well-documented. Many duties require long periods of standing, walking, and heavy lifting, exacting a significant physical toll on employees. The nature of these duties, in concert with Amazon’s electronic monitoring of fulfillment center employees through its “Time Off Task” metrics and punitive attendance policy, create a fast-paced, physically strenuous workplace environment that sees an annual employee turnover rate of 150 percent. As you well know, physically demanding work of this type may present a hazard to the health and safety of pregnant employees. Physically strenuous labor can not only pose increased risks of injury for pregnant individuals, but may increase the likelihood of miscarriage or preterm birth. Such risks have been clearly acknowledged by the Centers for Disease Control’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in the context of physically demanding job duties.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq.), requires employers to provide pregnant employees with the same workplace accommodations that they provide other employees “similar in their ability or inability to work.” In addition, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. §§ 12101 et seq.) requires employers to provide pregnant employees with reasonable accommodations “for limitations resulting from pregnancy-related conditions that constitute a disability or for limitations resulting from the interaction of the pregnancy with an underlying impairment.” Records show that Amazon routinely places injured workers unable to perform their regular job functions on light duty, with the company logging nearly 25,000 instances of reassignment to light duty following an injury across its facilities since 2017. On some occasions, injured Amazon workers have been reassigned to jobs designed to account for restricted mobility, such as tagging photos on a computer. Given those accommodations, Amazon is obliged to provide equivalent modifications to similarly impaired pregnant employees who request them. Furthermore, Amazon must reasonably accommodate the modification needs of employees with a disabling pregnancy-related condition or limitations caused by their pregnancy interacting with a disability.

However, in recent years, several reports have surfaced detailing the mistreatment of pregnant Amazon employees seeking to exercise their right to adequate modification of duties. Between 2015 and 2019, former Amazon employees filed at least seven lawsuits alleging that Amazon wrongfully terminated them during their pregnancies and failed to accommodate rudimentary requests such as more frequent bathroom breaks and fewer continuous hours on their feet. While Amazon settled several of these suits outside of court, a repeated pattern of publicly-reported pregnancy discrimination and pregnancy-related disability discrimination complaints has emerged at Amazon fulfillment centers as a product of the strenuous demands of the fulfillment center model.

I cannot help but draw your attention, for instance, to the case of Michelle Posey, an Amazon employee in Oklahoma City, who filed a complaint with the EEOC in 2020 about her treatment at Amazon’s OKC1 facility. Michelle’s harrowing account details her treatment during her high-risk pregnancy, in which Amazon allegedly denied her repeated requests for a transfer to a more suitable position, penalized her for pregnancy-related absences, and engaged in unauthorized contact with her doctor in an attempt to change her work restrictions. A Better Balance, the legal advocacy group that represented Michelle, indicated that it believed that Amazon’s treatment of their client “highlight[ed] broader issues with Amazon’s policies and practices.”

In July, Patty Hernandez, a former packer at Amazon’s OAK4 fulfillment center in Tracy, California, came forward with her story. Patty said that when she learned she was pregnant, she submitted a doctor’s note and repeatedly asked Amazon for lighter duty, but was denied. She continued to be assigned to lift bins filled with merchandise that weighed up to 50 pounds for hours at a time. Patty miscarried at seven weeks.

Michelle and Patty’s stories are emblematic of what appears to be a concerning pattern of mistreatment of pregnant employees at Amazon fulfillment centers. Accordingly, I ask that you take all appropriate steps to investigate and address Amazon’s systemic failure to provide adequate accommodations, including modification of job duties and time off for pregnancy-related medical needs, under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and Americans with Disabilities Act in the interest of the health and safety of pregnant workers (Source: https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/).

If you are a current or former Amazon worker who has been mistreated and suffered from workplace discrimination, retaliation, overtime violations or any unfair treatment, the labor and employment attorneys at Pagliara Law Group, are here to help. Here are some examples of how they mistreat employees.

Amazon’s past lawsuits showing how they Mistreat Workers

You should always feel safe and secure in you employment. We all know this is not always the reality. Amazon workers are subject to inhumane and unjust working conditions, and the company has shown a pattern that is systemic that mistreats and discriminates against its employees. Here are some of examples.

• Warehouse employees described a mandatory 60-hour work week during the holidays, which led to frequent ambulance calls for injured coworkers.
• In the winter, warehouse workers were forced to do their jobs in sub-zero temperatures.
• Workers feared repercussions for taking bathroom breaks and potentially falling short on quotas.
• An employee with Crohn’s disease, a painful inflammatory bowel condition, was fired and accused of stealing time for going to the restroom.
• Employees were expected to scan a new item every 11 seconds or risk getting fired.
• The company was accused of firing a warehouse worker out of retaliation when he criticized the company’s “robot”-like treatment of its workers.
• Amazon refused to offer a different assignment to accommodate a worker who had been injured on the job.
• Multiple women have sued the company for pregnancy discrimination. Pagliara Law Group is working on a current case where an employee was fired for asking to extend her approved leave by 3 days earlier because she had to have an emergency C-section and was fired for having her baby early. This is an example where Amazon puts profit over life.

Labor and Employment Laws

At least there are laws in place to give adequate protections to workers under these types of circumstances:

• Discrimination: It’s illegal to discriminate against an employee based on their race, age, religion, sex, national origin, or disability. Examples of discrimination include denying employment based on someone’s skin color, or refusing to provide equal opportunities to employees of different religious backgrounds.
• Harassment: Workplace harassment may include threats, slurs, offensive jokes, bullying, unwelcome sexual advances, and other actions that create a hostile work environment.
• Minimum Wage and Overtime Violations: Workers have a right to earn at least minimum wage. They also have a right to overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours and are a non-exempt employee. Some employers, however, don’t abide by these laws in an effort to cut costs.
• Denying Leave of Absence: Leave of absence laws are designed to protect workers who require extended periods of time away from work.
• Workplace Retaliation: Some employers retaliate against employees who file complaints against the company. They may retaliate by reducing the worker’s pay, demoting them, reassigning them to a less desirable role, or even excluding them from training and other essential activities.

Contact an Amazon Lawyer today! At Pagliara Law Group, we have experience with cases against Amazon and understand how to protect the hard working employee against this big company. We put the Lit in Litigation. Our legal team will build crucial evidence to bolster your case and help you recover the compensation that is due to you. Ready to get started? Call us today at 201-470-4181 for a free consultation. Our attorneys work on a contingency fee basis, which means we get paid only if your case is successful. Contact us now.