Amazon sued New York Attorney General Letitia James on Friday in an attempt to prevent it from opening charges against the company for security reasons at two of its New York City deposits.
The company also asked the court to compel Ms. James to declare that it had no authority to regulate workplace safety during the Covid-19 pandemic or to investigate allegations of retaliation against employees protesting their working conditions.
In the case, filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Amazon said James’s office was investigating pandemic security issues raised by employees at its large call center on Staten Island and at a warehouse in New York. delivery to Queens. He said James “threatened to sue” Amazon if it did not agree with his demands, including subsidizing bus service, reducing worker productivity requirements, evicting profits and reinstating Christian Smalls, a worker fired from Amazon in the spring.
Smalls said he was retaliated for leading a protest at the Staten Island warehouse. Amazon said he was fired for going to the workplace for the protest, although he was on paid quarantine leave after being exposed to a colleague who tested positive for the coronavirus.
Smalls has become the most visible case in the clashes between workers and Amazon, which has faced a wave of smaller and smaller consumer orders. As the pandemic spread across the country, many workers in the Amazon said the company missed its first opportunities to provide better protection against Covid-19.
Amazon vehemently defended its security measures and went on the offensive against its critics. In notes from an internal meeting of senior executives, Amazon’s top lawyer called Mr. Smalls inarticulate and discussed strategies to make him the face of the workers’ organization.
In its 64-page complaint, Amazon said its security measures “far exceed what is required by law,” and argued that federal law, not state law enforced by the New York attorney general, was supervised. for safety issues in the workplace.
“OAG lacks the legal authority it intends to exercise against Amazon,” said the company.
Amazon declined to comment beyond the request.
Ms. James, in a statement, said the lawsuit was “nothing more than a sad attempt to divert attention from the facts and evade responsibility for her failures to protect workers from a deadly virus”.
She said her office was reviewing its legal options. “Let me be clear: we will not be intimidated by anyone, especially by corporate aggressors who put profits above the health and safety of workers,” she said.
James Brudney, a professor of labor law at Fordham University, said it was unusual for companies to open the anticipated “scorched earth” process that Amazon did.
“They want to fight,” he said of Amazon. “They always want to fight.”
Brudney said federal law prevents enforcement of workplace safety in many cases, although there are exceptions that James could argue.
“It seems reasonable to see if the state can prove its case,” he said. He added that federal oversight “has failed terribly and tragically” to create and guarantee workplace safety for a pandemic, so states have stepped in to address the gaps.
Much of Amazon’s complaints detail its response to the pandemic, including setting up temperature checks at entrances, providing masks and offering free on-site testing. He said that, by his calculations, 1.15 percent of his New York frontline employees had tested positive or were considered positive for the coronavirus, about half the rate for the general population in the state.
The complaint also cited an email documenting the unannounced inspection by the New York City Sheriff’s Office of the Staten Island warehouse on March 30, which stated that Amazon “seemed to go beyond current compliance requirements.”