Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
A former Amazon employee is suing the company for discriminating against Black and Hispanic warehouse workers in its response to the ongoing pandemic. Christian Smalls worked at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, and says Amazon failed to provide him and his team with adequate protective equipment in the early months of the coronavirus outbreak.
“By failing to provide PPE equipment to its predominantly minority workforce,” the complaint alleges, “[Amazon] subjected a class of African American and Hispanic workers to inferior terms and conditions of employment as it offered predominantly Caucasian employees working in managerial classifications.”