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    For Retail Workers, Omicron Disruptions Aren’t Just About Health

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    Stores are shortening hours, fitting rooms are being closed and some employees can’t go on break. “Morale could not be lower,” one retail worker said.Long checkout lines. Closed fitting rooms. Empty shelves. Shortened store hours.Plus the dread of contracting the coronavirus and yet another season of skirmishes with customers who refuse to wear masks.A weary retail work force is experiencing the fallout from the latest wave of the pandemic, with a rapidly spreading variant cutting into staffing.While data shows that people infected with the Omicron variant are far less likely to be hospitalized than those with the Delta variant, especially if they are vaccinated, many store workers are dealing with a new jump in illness and exposures, grappling with shifting guidelines around isolation and juggling child care. At the same time, retailers are generally not extending hazard pay as they did earlier in the pandemic and have been loath to adopt vaccine or testing mandates.“We had gotten to a point here where we were comfortable, it wasn’t too bad, and then all of a sudden this new variant came and everybody got sick,” said Artavia Milliam, who works at H&M in Hudson Yards in Manhattan, which is popular with tourists. “It’s been overwhelming, just having to deal with not having enough staff and then twice as many people in the store.”Ms. Milliam, a member of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, is vaccinated but contracted the virus during the holidays, experiencing mild symptoms. She said that fewer employees were working registers and organizing clothing and that her store had been closing the fitting rooms in the mornings because nobody was available to monitor them.Macy’s said last week that it would shorten store hours nationally on Mondays through Thursdays for the rest of the month. At least 20 Apple Stores have had to close in recent weeks because so many employees had contracted Covid-19 or been exposed to someone who had, and others have curtailed hours or limited in-store access.At a Macy’s in Lynnwood, Wash., Liisa Luick, a longtime sales associate in the men’s department, said, “Every day, we have call-outs, and we have a lot of them.” She said the store had already reduced staff to cut costs in 2020. Now, she is often unable to take breaks and has fielded complaints from customers about a lack of sales help and unstaffed registers.“Morale could not be lower,” said Ms. Luick, who is a steward for the local unit of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Even though Washington has a mask mandate for indoor public spaces, “we get a lot of pushback, so morale is even lower because there’s so many people who, there’s no easy way to say this, just don’t believe in masking,” she added.Store workers are navigating the changing nature of the virus and trying their best to gauge new risks. Many say that with vaccinations and boosters, they are less fearful for their lives than they were in 2020 — the United Food and Commercial Workers union has tracked more than 200 retail worker deaths since the start of the pandemic — but they remain nervous about catching and spreading the virus.At a Stop & Shop in Oyster Bay, N.Y., Wally Waugh, a front-end manager, said that checkout lines were growing longer and that grocery shelves were not being restocked in a timely manner because so many people were calling in sick with their own positive tests or those of family members.That has forced remaining employees to work more hours. But even with overtime pay, many of his colleagues are not eager to stay in the store longer than they must. Mr. Waugh has started taking off his work clothes in his garage and immediately putting them in the laundry before entering his house — a routine he hadn’t followed since the earliest days of the pandemic.Wally Waugh in his garage, where he changes out of the clothes he wears to work at a Stop & Shop to avoid possibly spreading the coronavirus.Sasha Maslov for The New York Times“People are not nervous like when Covid first started,” said Mr. Waugh, who is a steward for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “But we are gravely concerned.”At a QFC grocery store in Seattle, Sam Dancy, a front-end supervisor, said many colleagues were calling out sick. The store, part of a chain owned by Kroger, has closed early several times, and customers are helping to bag their own groceries. There are long lines, and some of the self-checkout lanes are closed because employees aren’t available to oversee them.“Some people are so tired of what’s going on — you have some that are exposed and some that are using it as an excuse to not have to work to be around these circumstances,” said Mr. Dancy, a member of the local food and commercial workers union, who has worked at the chain for 30 years. “I have anxiety till I get home, thinking, ‘Do I have this or not?’ It’s a mental thing that I think a lot of us are enduring.”Shifting guidelines around isolation are also causing confusion at many stores. While H&M has instructed employees like Ms. Milliam to isolate for 14 days after testing positive for Covid-19, Macy’s said in a memo to employees last week that it would adopt new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that recommended shortening isolation for infected people to five days from 10 if they are asymptomatic or their symptoms are resolving.But even if retailers shorten isolation periods, schools and day-care facilities may have longer quarantine periods for exposed families, putting working parents in a bind.Ms. Luick of Macy’s said she felt the guidance was aimed at “constantly trying to get people to work,” and did not make her feel safer.Even as Omicron spreads faster than other variants, employers have not shown a willingness to reinstitute previous precautions or increased pay, said Kevin Schneider, secretary-treasurer of a unit of the United Food and Commercial Workers in the Denver area.Like many retailers, Kroger hasn’t provided hazard pay nationally since the early stages of the pandemic, though the union is negotiating for it to be reinstated. The chain has also discontinued measures like controlling how many customers are allowed in stores at a time. The union has been asking for armed guards at all of its stores in the Denver area as incidents of violence increase.“The company says they are providing a safe environment for workers to do their jobs in,” Mr. Schneider said. “We don’t believe that.”In a statement, a Kroger spokeswoman said, “We have been navigating the Covid-19 pandemic for nearly two years, and, in line with our values, the safety of our associates and customers has remained our top priority.”The company added that frontline employees had each received as much $1,760 in additional pay to “reward and recognize them for their efforts during the pandemic.”Some workers have reached another breaking point. In Jacksonville, Fla., one Apple Store employee organized a brief walkout on Christmas Eve to protest working conditions after he witnessed a customer spitting on his colleague. Dozens of people at other stores also participated.“It was my final straw,” said Daryl Sherman II, who organized the walkout. “Something had to be done.”In some cases, municipalities have stepped in to obtain hazard pay for workers. In Seattle, Kroger has been required to pay grocery store employees like Mr. Dancy an extra $4 an hour based on local legislation.“Some people are so tired of what’s going on,” said Sam Dancy, a front-end supervisor at QFC, a grocery store chain.Grant Hindsley for The New York TimesMore broadly, the staffing shortages have put a new spotlight on a potential vaccine-or-testing mandate from the Biden administration, which major retailers have been resisting. The fear of losing workers appears to be looming large, especially now.While the retail industry initially cited the holiday season rush for its resistance to such rules, it has more recently pointed to the burden of testing unvaccinated workers. After oral arguments in the case on Friday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority expressed skepticism about whether the Biden administration had legal authority to mandate that large employers require workers to be vaccinated.The National Retail Federation, a major industry lobbying group, said in a statement last week that it “continues to believe that OSHA exceeded its authority in promulgating its vaccine mandate.” The group estimated that the order would require 20 million tests a week nationally, based on external data on unvaccinated workers, and that “such testing capacity currently does not exist.”When the top managers at Mr. Waugh’s Stop & Shop store began asking employees whether they were vaccinated in preparation for the federal vaccine mandates that could soon take effect, he said, a large number expressed concern to him about being asked to disclose that information.“It was concerning to see that so many people were distressed,” he said, though all of the employees complied.Ms. Luick of Macy’s near Seattle said that she worked with several vocal opponents of the Covid-19 vaccines and that she anticipated that at least some of her colleagues would resign if they were asked to provide vaccination status or proof of negative tests.Macy’s told employees last week that it would adopt new guidance from the C.D.C. that recommended shortening isolation periods.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesStill, Macy’s was among major employers that started asking employees for their vaccination status last week ahead of the Supreme Court hearing on Friday and said it might require proof of negative tests beginning on Feb. 16.“Our primary focus at this stage is preparing our members for an eventual mandate to ensure they have the information and tools they need to manage their work force and meet the needs of their customers,” said Brian Dodge, president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which includes companies like Macy’s, Target, Home Depot, Gap and Walmart.As seasonal Covid-19 surges become the norm, unions and companies are looking for consistent policies. Jim Araby, director of strategic campaigns for the food and commercial workers union in Northern California, said the retail industry needed to put in place more sustainable supports for workers who got ill.For example, he said, a trust fund jointly administered by the union and several employers could no longer offer Covid-related sick days for union members.“We have to start treating this as endemic,” Mr. Araby said. “And figuring out what are the structural issues we have to put forward to deal with this.”Kellen Browning contributed reporting. More

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    Amazon Reaches Labor Deal, Giving Workers More Power to Organize

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    The agreement’s national scope and its concessions to organizing go further than any previous settlement that the e-commerce giant has made.SEATTLE — Amazon, which faces mounting scrutiny over worker rights, agreed to let its warehouse employees more easily organize in the workplace as part of a nationwide settlement with the National Labor Relations Board this month.Under the settlement, made final on Wednesday, Amazon said it would email past and current warehouse workers — likely more than one million people — with notifications of their rights and give them greater flexibility to organize in its buildings. The agreement also makes it easier and faster for the N.L.R.B., which investigates claims of unfair labor practices, to sue Amazon if it believes the company violated the terms.Amazon has previously settled individual cases with the labor agency, but the new settlement’s national scope and its concessions to organizing go further than any previous agreement.Because of Amazon’s sheer size — more than 750,000 people work in its operations in the United States alone — the agency said the settlement would reach one of the largest groups of workers in its history. The tech giant also agreed to terms that would let the N.L.R.B. bypass an administrative hearing process, a lengthy and cumbersome undertaking, if the agency found that the company had not abided by the settlement.The agreement stemmed from six cases of Amazon workers who said the company limited their ability to organize colleagues. A copy was obtained by The New York Times.It is a “big deal given the magnitude of the size of Amazon,” said Wilma B. Liebman, who was the chair of the N.L.R.B. under President Barack Obama.Amazon, which has been on a hiring frenzy in the pandemic and is the nation’s second-largest private employer after Walmart, has faced increased labor pressure as its work force has soared to nearly 1.5 million globally. The company has become a leading example of a rising tide of worker organizing as the pandemic reshapes what employees expect from their employers.This year, Amazon has grappled with organizing efforts at warehouses in Alabama and New York, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters formally committed to support organizing at the company. Other companies, such as Starbucks, Kellogg and Deere & Company, have faced rising union activity as well.Compounding the problem, Amazon is struggling to find enough employees to satiate its growth. The company was built on a model of high-turnover employment, which has now crashed into a phenomenon known as the Great Resignation, with workers in many industries quitting their jobs in search of a better deal for themselves.Amazon has responded by raising wages and pledging to improve its workplace. It has said it would spend $4 billion to deal with labor shortages this quarter alone.“This settlement agreement provides a crucial commitment from Amazon to millions of its workers across the United States that it will not interfere with their right to act collectively to improve their workplace by forming a union or taking other collective action,” Jennifer Abruzzo, the N.L.R.B.’s new general counsel appointed by President Biden, said in a statement on Thursday.Amazon declined to comment. The company has said it supports workers’ rights to organize but believes employees are better served without a union.Amazon and the labor agency have been in growing contact, and at times conflict. More than 75 cases alleging unfair labor practices have been brought against Amazon since the start of the pandemic, according to the N.L.R.B.’s database. Ms. Abruzzo has also issued several memos directing the agency’s staff to enforce labor laws against employers more aggressively.A sign encouraging workers to cast a ballot in a union vote at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Ala., in March.Charity Rachelle for The New York TimesLast month, the agency threw out the results of a failed, prominent union election at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, saying the company had inappropriately interfered with the voting. The agency ordered another election. Amazon has not appealed the finding, though it can still do so.Other employers, from beauty salons to retirement communities, have made nationwide settlements with the N.L.R.B. in the past when changing policies.With the new settlement, Amazon agreed to change a policy that limited employee access to its facilities and notify employees that it had done so, as well as informing them of other labor rights. The settlement requires Amazon to post notices in all of its U.S. operations and on the employee app, called A to Z. Amazon must also email every person who has worked in its operations since March.In past cases, Amazon explicitly said a settlement did not constitute an admission of wrongdoing. No similar language was included in the new settlement. In September, Ms. Abruzzo directed N.L.R.B. staff to accept these “non-admission clauses” only rarely.The combination of terms, including the “unusual” commitment to email past and current employees, made Amazon’s settlement stand out, Ms. Liebman said, adding that other large employers were likely to take notice.“It sends a signal that this general counsel is really serious about enforcing the law and what they will accept,” she said.The six cases that led to Amazon’s settlement with the agency involved its workers in Chicago and Staten Island, N.Y. They had said Amazon prohibited them from being in areas like a break room or parking lot until within 15 minutes before or after their shifts, hampering any organizing.One case was brought by Ted Miin, who works at an Amazon delivery station in Chicago. In an interview, Mr. Miin said a manager had told him, “It is more than 15 minutes past your shift, and you are not allowed to be here,” when he passed out newsletters at a protest in April.“Co-workers were upset about being understaffed and overworked and staged a walkout,” he said, adding that a security guard also pressured him to leave the site while handing out leaflets.In another case on Staten Island, Amazon threatened to call the police on an employee who handed out union literature on site, said Seth Goldstein, a lawyer who represents the company’s workers in Staten Island.The right for workers to organize on-site during non-working time is well established, said Matthew Bodie, a former lawyer for the N.L.R.B. who teaches labor law at Saint Louis University.“The fact that you can hang around and chat — that is prime, protected concerted activity periods, and the board has always been very protective of that,” he said.Mr. Miin, who is part of an organizing group called Amazonians United Chicagoland, and other workers in Chicago reached a settlement with Amazon in the spring over the 15-minute rule at a different delivery station where they had worked last year. Two corporate employees also settled privately with Amazon in an agreement that included a nationwide notification of worker rights, but the agency does not police it.Mr. Goldstein said he was “impressed” that the N.L.R.B. had pressed Amazon to agree to terms that would let the agency bypass its administrative hearing process, which happens before a judge and in which parties prepare arguments and present evidence, if it found the company had broken the agreement’s terms.“They can get a court order to make Amazon obey federal labor law,” he said. More

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    At Amazon Site, Tornado Collided With Company’s Peak Delivery Season

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    Amazon, which has its highest employment during the holiday shopping season, said the tornado formed at the site’s parking lot.Nearly every day as Christmas nears, Amazon’s share of online sales typically rises, as customers turn to the e-commerce giant to quickly deliver packages. To make that happen, Amazon hires hundreds of thousands of additional workers, both full-time employees and contractors, and runs its operations at full tilt.One of them, Alonzo Harris, drove his cargo van into Amazon’s delivery depot in Edwardsville, Ill., after 8 p.m. on Friday after a full day delivering packages north of St. Louis. Suddenly, an alarm blared on his work phone. Someone yelled that this was not a drill. Mr. Harris, 44, ran into a shelter on Amazon’s site and heard a loud roar.“I felt like the floor was coming off the ground,” he said. “I felt the wind blowing and saw debris flying everywhere, and people started screaming and hollering and the lights went out.”One of the tornadoes that roared through Kentucky, Arkansas, Illinois and other states on Friday had plowed straight into Amazon’s delivery station in Edwardsville. The toll was grim: Six people died, with 45 making it out alive, according to the Illinois governor, J.B. Pritzker.At least six people died after a tornado tore through an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill., on Friday.MaxarOn Sunday, the authorities said that there were no additional reports of missing people but that search efforts were continuing. It was initially unclear how many people had been at Amazon’s site and what safety measures could have been taken to minimize the loss of life. The tornado was ferocious, ripping off the building’s roof. Two of the structure’s 40-foot-high concrete walls collapsed.The tornado coincided with a peak in the company’s work force. Americans’ reliance on Amazon soon turned the deaths at the delivery depot into a focus of the public as the tornadoes’ toll became clear over the weekend.At a church service on Sunday at Thrive Church in Granite City, Ill., about 15 miles from the destroyed Amazon site, clergy and congregants tried to make sense of the disaster and the company’s response.“It’s not lost on me, Lord, that this was an Amazon warehouse, and I, like so many other people in this country, get irritated if I can’t get my Christmas gifts in three days from Amazon,” Sharon Autenrieth, the pastor, said during the service.That logistical peak also complicated the rescue effort in Edwardsville. The more than 250,000 drivers like Mr. Harris who fuel Amazon’s delivery network do not work directly for the company but instead are employed by over 3,000 contractor companies. On Saturday, Mike Fillback, the police chief in Edwardsville, said the authorities had “challenges” in knowing “how many people we actually had at that facility at the time because it’s not a set staff.”Only seven people at Amazon’s site were full-time employees, said a Madison County commissioner who declined to give his name. He said most were delivery drivers in their 20s who work as contractors.The delivery center sits in a flat industrial expanse with low-slung warehouses, parked semi-trucks and muddy fields a few miles east of St. Louis and the Mississippi River. An Amazon fulfillment center almost directly across the street from the delivery station was largely untouched. On the front windows there, next to images of snowflakes and Christmas trees, were the words “Peak 2021” and “Our Time To Shine.”On Sunday, Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said about 190 people worked at the delivery station across all of its shifts but declined to comment on how many were full-time workers. She said the tornado formed in the parking lot, hit and then dissipated.The tornado struck at the end of a shift, as drivers returned their vans, unloaded items and headed home. Contract drivers are not required to clock into the building, Ms. Nantel said.Workers there sheltered in two places, she said, and one of those areas was directly struck. These areas are typically fortified, though it was unclear if they were built to withstand a direct tornado strike. Based on preliminary interviews, Ms. Nantel added, the company calculated that about 11 minutes lapsed between the first warning of a tornado and when it hit the delivery station.The six victims ranged in age from 26 to 62 years old, the Edwardsville police department said on Sunday.Amazon’s model of using contractors is part of a huge push that the company started in 2018 to expand its own deliveries, rather than rely solely on shipping companies like UPS. The company built a network of delivery stations, like the one Edwardsville, which are typically cavernous, single-story buildings.Unlike Amazon’s massive, multistory fulfillment centers where it stores inventory and packs items into individual packages, the delivery stations employ fewer people. Amazon employees sort packages for each delivery route in one area. Then, drivers working for contractors bring vans into another area, where the packages are rolled over in carts, loaded into the vans and driven out.Amazon had about 70 delivery stations in the United States in 2017 and now has almost 600, with more planned, according to the industry consultant MWPVL International. Globally, the company delivers more than half of its own packages, and as much a three-quarters of its packages in the United States.Most drivers work for other companies under a program called Delivery Service Partners. Amazon has said the contracting arrangement helps support small businesses that can hire in their communities. But industry consultants and Amazon employees directly involved in the program have said it lets the company avoid liability for accidents and other risks, and limits labor organizing in a heavily unionized industry.Sucharita Kodali, an analyst at Forrester Research, said that while the holiday season is critical for all retailers, it is particularly intense for Amazon. “They promise these delivery dates, so they are likely to experience the most last-minute purchases,” she said.The Edwardsville delivery station, which Amazon calls DLI4, opened last year and had room for 60 vans at once, according to planning documents.On Friday, a tornado warning was in effect for Edwardsville as of 8:06 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. At 8:27 p.m., the county emergency management agency reported a partial roof collapse at Amazon’s delivery depot and that people were trapped inside.Aerial footage of the wreckage showed dozens of vans, many of which had Amazon’s logo, underneath the rubble. Some of the vans were U-Hauls, which the contractors sometimes rent to serve demand during busy periods.Carla Cope and her husband, said their son, Clayton Cope, 29, was a maintenance mechanic contracting for Amazon. They spoke to him by phone on Friday night when he was at work, they said, and he assured them that he and other workers were on their way to the tornado shelter on site.About 10 minutes later, the tornado struck. The Copes tried numerous times to reach their son again by phone. They eventually drove to the warehouse from their home in Brighton, Ill., a half-hour away.“When we pulled up to the building it was pretty devastating,” Ms. Cope said. “There were trucks and rescue vehicles everywhere, a lot of chaos.”When her husband saw the damage, he immediately feared the worst, Ms. Cope said. Mr. Cope works the same job as a maintenance mechanic that their son did, splitting the night shifts except on Wednesdays when the two work together. He knew that their son was likely to have been in the part of the building that collapsed, she said.The couple waited at the building until 4:30 a.m., when officials informed them that they had recovered their son’s body.“There’s just really no words to describe it when they tell you your son’s dead,” said Ms. Cope, her voice cracking. “It’s surreal, unbelievable, devastating.”Mr. Harris, the delivery driver who survived the storm, said that after the tornado passed, he saw a green tornado shelter sign still hanging above Amazon’s shelter.“I doubt anything man-made can withstand Mother Nature’s force,” he said. “I think it was an act of God that our shelter remained secure.”Robert Chiarito More

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    Ifeoma Ozoma Blew the Whistle on Pinterest. Now She Protects Whistle-Blowers.

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    Ifeoma Ozoma, who accused Pinterest of discrimination, has become a key figure in helping tech employees disclose, and fight, mistreatment at work.Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed a bill to expand protections for people who speak up about discrimination in the workplace.A new website arrived to offer tech workers advice on how to come forward about mistreatment by their employers.And Apple responded to a shareholder proposal that asked it to assess how it used confidentiality agreements in employee harassment and discrimination cases.The disparate developments had one thing — or, rather, a person — in common: Ifeoma Ozoma.Since last year, Ms. Ozoma, 29, a former employee of Pinterest, Facebook and Google, has emerged as a central figure among tech whistle-blowers. The Yale-educated daughter of Nigerian immigrants, she has supported and mentored tech workers who needed help speaking out, pushed for more legal protections for those employees and urged tech companies and their shareholders to change their whistle-blower policies.She helped inspire and pass the new California law, the Silenced No More Act, which prohibits companies from using nondisclosure agreements to squelch workers who speak up against discrimination in any form. Ms. Ozoma also released a website, The Tech Worker Handbook, which provides information on whether and how workers should blow the whistle.“It’s really sad to me that we still have such a lack of accountability within the tech industry that individuals have to do it” by speaking up, Ms. Ozoma said in an interview.Her efforts — which have alienated at least one ally along the way — are increasingly in the spotlight as restive tech employees take more action against their employers. Last month, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, revealed that she had leaked thousands of internal documents about the social network’s harms. (Facebook has since renamed itself Meta.) Apple also recently faced employee unrest, with many workers voicing concerns about verbal abuse, sexual harassment, retaliation and discrimination.Connie Leyva, a California state senator, center, wrote the Silenced No More Act, which was signed into law last month.Chelsea Guglielmino/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesMs. Ozoma is now focused on directly pushing tech companies to stop using nondisclosure agreements to prevent employees from speaking out about workplace discrimination. She has also met with activists and organizations that want to pass legislation similar to the Silenced No More Act elsewhere. And she is constantly in touch with other activist tech workers, including those who have organized against Google and Apple.Much of Ms. Ozoma’s work stems from experience. In June 2020, she and a colleague, Aerica Shimizu Banks, publicly accused their former employer, the virtual pinboard maker Pinterest, of racism and sexism. Pinterest initially denied the allegations but later apologized for its workplace culture. Its workers staged a walkout, and a former executive sued the company over gender discrimination.“It’s remarkable how Ifeoma has taken some very painful experiences, developed solutions for them and then built a movement around making those solutions a reality,” said John Tye, the founder of Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit that provides legal support to whistle-blowers. He and Ms. Ozoma recently appeared on a webinar to educate people on whistle-blower rights.Meredith Whittaker, a former Google employee who helped organize a 2018 walkout over the company’s sexual harassment policy, added of Ms. Ozoma: “She has stuck around and worked to help others blow the whistle more safely.”Ms. Ozoma, who grew up in Anchorage and Raleigh, N.C., became an activist after a five-year career in the tech industry. A political science major, she moved to Washington, D.C., in 2015 to join Google in government relations. She then worked at Facebook in Silicon Valley on international policy.In 2018, Pinterest recruited Ms. Ozoma to its public policy team. There, she helped bring Ms. Banks on board. They spearheaded policy decisions including ending the promotion of anti-vaccination information and content related to plantation weddings on Pinterest, Ms. Ozoma said.Yet Ms. Ozoma and Ms. Banks said they faced unequal pay, racist comments and retaliation for raising complaints at Pinterest. They left the company in May 2020. A month later, during the Black Lives Matter protests, Pinterest posted a statement supporting its Black employees.Ms. Ozoma and Ms. Banks said Pinterest’s hypocrisy had pushed them to speak out. On Twitter, they disclosed their experiences as Black women at the company, with Ms. Ozoma declaring that Pinterest’s statement was “a joke.”In a statement, Pinterest said it had taken steps to increase diversity.By speaking out, Ms. Ozoma and Ms. Banks took a risk. That’s because they broke the nondisclosure agreements they had signed with Pinterest when they left the company. California law, which offered only partial protection, didn’t cover people speaking out about racial discrimination.Peter Rukin, their lawyer, said he had an idea: What if state law was expanded to ban nondisclosure agreements from preventing people speaking out on any workplace discrimination? Ms. Ozoma and Ms. Banks soon began working with a California state senator, Connie Leyva, a Democrat, on a bill to do just that. It was introduced in February.“I’m just so proud of these women for coming forward,” Ms. Levya said.Along the way, Ms. Ozoma and Ms. Banks fell out. Ms. Banks said she no longer spoke with Ms. Ozoma because Ms. Ozoma had recruited her to Pinterest without disclosing the discrimination there and then excluded her from working on the Silenced No More Act.“Ifeoma then cut me out of the initiative through gaslighting and bullying,” Ms. Banks said.Ms. Ozoma said she had not cut Ms. Banks out of the organizing. She added that Ms. Banks had “felt left out” because news coverage focused on Ms. Ozoma’s role.Understand the Facebook PapersCard 1 of 6A tech giant in trouble. More

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    OSHA, citing Covid failures, moves to strip three states of workplace safety authority.

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    The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Tuesday that it was taking steps that could strip three states — Arizona, South Carolina and Utah — of their authority to regulate workplace safety, citing shortcomings in policies on coronavirus protection.Under federal law, states can assume responsibility for occupational safety if the government approves their plan for doing so and if the plan remains at least as effective as federal enforcement.Federal officials said Tuesday that the three states had failed to adopt a rule that OSHA issued in June — or to adopt one at least as effective — requiring certain Covid-related safety measures by employers, like providing protective equipment.“OSHA has worked in good faith to help these three state plans come into compliance,” Jim Frederick, the agency’s acting director, said on a call with reporters. “But their continued refusal is a failure to maintain their state plan commitment to thousands of workers in their state.”Emily H. Farr, the director of South Carolina’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, expressed disappointment in the action, saying that the state’s program had “proven effective as South Carolina has consistently had one of the lowest injury and illness rates in the nation.”Officials in Arizona and Utah did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Twenty-eight states or territories have OSHA-approved plans for enforcing workplace safety. Where no plan has been approved, OSHA retains primary authority.The action comes as OSHA prepares to release a rule mandating that companies with 100 or more workers require employees to be vaccinated or to submit to weekly Covid-19 testing. Some states have indicated that they will challenge the rule, though the legal basis for doing so appears weak.OSHA, which is part of the Labor Department, will publish a notice in the Federal Register announcing its proposal to reconsider and revoke approval of the three states’ self-regulation plans. There will be a 35-day comment period on the proposal before it can be finalized.Seema Nanda, the Labor Department solicitor, said that as a result of the process, the states’ authority to regulate workplace safety could be revoked entirely or partially, such as for certain industries. More

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    Dollar Stores Hit a Pandemic Downturn

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    Sandra Beadling was fed up with the 70-hour workweeks, the delivery trucks running days behind schedule, and the wear and tear on her knees from all the stooping to restock the bottom shelves.The manager of the Dollar General store in Wells, Maine, Ms. Beadling, 54, had tried to hire more help. But that was a tough sell when Walmart was offering $16 an hour and her store was paying $12.Ms. Beadling had spent long stretches this summer as one of only a few workers in the store, tending to the register and trying to help shoppers. She had pleaded with her managers to allow the store’s part-time workers to have more hours, but to no avail.One night last month, Ms. Beadling closed up the Dollar General at 10, got home at 11:30 and then left her house at 4 a.m. to be back at the store for an inventory check. “I was so tired I couldn’t find words,” she said. She sent her assistant manager a text saying she had quit and then blocked her co-workers’ numbers so they couldn’t call back and persuade her to stay.“It wasn’t sustainable,” Ms. Beadling said.Some wonder whether the same can be said for the unbridled success of dollar stores and their business model, which has benefited from the prevalence of poverty and disinvestment in the inner cities and rural America. Dollar stores, which pay among the lowest wages in the retail industry and often operate in areas where there is little competition, are stumbling in the later stages of the pandemic.Sales are slowing and some measures of profit are shrinking as the industry struggles with a confluence of challenges. They include burned-out workers, pressure to increase wages, supply chain problems and a growing number of cities and towns that are rejecting new dollar stores because, they say, the business model harms their communities.Just this week, Dollar Tree, which also operates Family Dollar stores, said it would start selling more products above $1. The move has broad significance beyond the discount retail industry, analysts say, because it signals that a company that has built its brand on selling $1 merchandise feels the need to shift its model to account for higher wages and an unreliable supply line from Asia.“It means these issues may be permanent,” said Scott Mushkin, a founder and an analyst at R5 Capital, a research and consulting firm focused on retail.The dollar store strategy has struggled in an economy like the current one.Edmund D. Fountain for The New York TimesThe troubles follow a year of soaring profits and a period of staggering growth in the industry. Roughly one in every three stores that have been announced to open in the United States this year is a dollar store, according to Coresight Research, a retail advisory firm, a sign of how well the industry did in 2020.The business model, which relies on relatively cheap labor and inexpensive goods, is designed to flourish even when its core customers are hurting financially. The strategy was honed during the high unemployment and wage stagnation of the Great Recession of 2008.But dollar stores are not as well equipped for the surreal economy of today, when workers like Ms. Beadling are quitting in protest and a single coronavirus case on a container ship can cause a two-month delay in getting Chinese-made merchandise to the United States.“This is another case of the pandemic laying bare the underlying vulnerabilities in how we’ve set up our economy,” said Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an advocacy group that is critical of many large corporate retailers.While just about every retailer is dealing with shipping and distribution problems, the dollar stores may have difficulty passing on the increased costs to price-sensitive customers.Dollar Tree said it expected as much as $200 million in additional freight costs this year.In an August conference call with analysts, Dollar Tree’s chief executive, Michael Witynski, recounted how one of the shipping vessels the company had chartered was denied entry to a Chinese port after a crew member tested positive for the virus. The ship had to change crews in Indonesia before returning to China.Dollar General added 50,000 workers this summer, the retailer said.Simon Simard for The New York TimesThe store in Eliot, Maine, where another manager recently quit.Simon Simard for The New York TimesMr. Mushkin said of Dollar Tree: “They have everything going the wrong way.”Dollar General said it had hired 50,000 additional workers between mid-July and Labor Day, but acknowledged in August that its labor costs were adding to expenses. Analysts say some of these additional expenses are driven by the pressure to raise wages.Still, the higher pay may not be enough to encourage employees to stay on the job. Workers say the stores are chronically understaffed and rely on part-time workers who are given unpredictable schedules and cannot afford the required employee contribution for health care benefits.In a statement, Dollar General said, “We pay competitive wages, which are determined based on several factors including the relevant labor market.” The company added that “our operating standards are designed to provide stores with sufficient labor hours, and it is not our expectation that store managers should work 70 to 80 hours per week.”Part-time workers sometimes encounter the opposite problem of not having enough work. As a store manager, Ms. Beadling said, she was constantly trying to find additional hours to give to her employees who needed the money, including one worker who was living in a tent because she couldn’t afford rent.But the allotted hours for the store were limited by higher-up managers, she said. This summer, social media buzzed with photos of dollar stores, from Lincoln, Neb., to Pittsburgh and beyond, where employees had taped up signs in the front door announcing that they had walked off the job.“Capitalism will destroy this country,” read one sign in the window of a Dollar General in Eliot, Maine, this spring. “If you don’t pay people enough to live their lives, why should they slave away for you?”Paige Murdock, the former Dollar General manager in Eliot, now works in a coffee warehouse and delivers for DoorDash.Simon Simard for The New York TimesPaige Murdock, a manager of the Eliot store, was the first to quit. The company limited the hours she could give to her staff, she said, which often meant she was running the store short-handed.She went weeks without getting a day off or seeing her family but, as a salaried employee, did not receive overtime pay. When a manager said Ms. Murdock, 44, couldn’t take her previously approved vacation week to help her daughter, who is in the military, move to Texas, she decided to quit.“If you look at my résumé, I am a very loyal employee,” Ms. Murdock said. “I will work my heart out. All the other jobs I left I would give two weeks’ notice. I don’t call out. I don’t ask for much.”Mr. Murdock now works in a warehouse for a coffee company and picks up delivery jobs at DoorDash to fill in the gaps.In its statement, Dollar General said its manager turnover “has been at historically low levels over the past few years.”Chris Burton started working at a Dollar General in New Orleans in the spring of 2020, earning $10 an hour. A saxophonist, he took the job because his work as a substitute teacher and his musical performances had been put on hold during the pandemic. More than a year later, his hourly pay has nudged up only to $11.“Walmart will move you up to $15 much faster,” said Mr. Burton, 34, who works with Step Up Louisiana, a labor advocacy group that has been pushing for improved working conditions in dollar stores. “But Dollar General is never going to pay as much as Walmart. That’s how they keep their prices lower. It’s basic economics.”Chris Burton took a $10-an-hour job at a Dollar General in New Orleans because the pandemic put his substitute teaching and music performances on hold.Edmund D. Fountain for The New York TimesWall Street is also taking note of the low pay and the complaints from employees about working conditions.“We regularly see shelves that are stocked in a disorganized manner,” said Brad Thomas, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets. “As a retail analyst that indicates that the store doesn’t have enough labor or the right labor.”Mr. Mushkin of R5 Capital said other major retailers had responded faster to the changing labor conditions by raising wages when their sales were booming last year. Those early moves resulted in a smaller hit to their bottom line than what the dollar stores are experiencing.“We provide our associates with flexible schedules and market-competitive pay, and in all cases, we are at or above minimum wage in the markets we operate in,” Dollar Tree said in a statement.Political attitudes toward dollar stores in some communities are also shifting. Since the start of the pandemic, nearly three dozen communities have passed limits on dollar store developments or rejected stores outright, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.The dollar stores say those are the exceptions. “We are always disappointed when local lawmakers choose to limit our ability to serve their community, but these relatively few situations have not materially impaired our ability to grow,” Dollar General said.The company added, “We provide our customers with convenient access to essential items and quality brands they want and need, including components of a nutritious meal,” including fresh produce, which is being offered in an increasing number of stores.Although the opposition hardly makes a dent in the more than 1,620 dollar stores slated to open this year, some measures have happened in major markets such as the Atlanta area and Cleveland, and in small towns like Warrensburg, N.Y.There has been considerable opposition on Warrensburg’s governing board to a Dollar General that was proposed to be built on Main Street.Bryan Rounds, a member of the board, said Warrensburg, in the southern Adirondacks, had long been mostly a “drive-through town” on the road to lakeside camps or ski slopes farther north. But during the pandemic, Warrensburg, like many rural areas, became a popular spot for Airbnb rentals. “Things are happening around here,” Mr. Rounds said. “We don’t need one of these stores.” More

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    'Every Day Is Frightening': Working For Walmart Amid Covid

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    It was a hot morning in Baton Rouge, La., the day that Peter Naughton woke up on the floor.Sore, disoriented, he’d already grasped what his mother was now telling him: He’d had another seizure. But he also grasped a larger truth: He needed to pull it together and somehow go to work.A cashier and self-checkout host at the nearby Walmart, Mr. Naughton dreaded depleting his limited paid time off in the midst of a pandemic. His mother, for her part, insisted that her epileptic son, then 44, stay home and rest. The hours after a seizure were difficult enough. Toss in the stress of Covid-19 and a customer base that largely — and often angrily — rejected mask use, and a day at work seemed anything but recuperative.In the end, Mr. Naughton’s growing headache and general fogginess were intense enough that he conceded to his mother’s wishes. He dialed once, twice, three times. No answer. Given the penalty for missing work without giving notice — and the fear of risking his job during uncertain times — he saw what he had to do. Reeling, he made the trip to the store and clocked in.That was the summer of 2020, and in the bewildering year since, the stakes and strain around low-wage frontline jobs like Mr. Naughton’s seem only to have multiplied.As shuttered offices cautiously debate the merits and logistics of reopening, a parallel sphere of workers — retail employees, day laborers, emergency personnel, medical staff, and so on — seemingly inhabit another country entirely. In their case nothing ever shuttered. Often their jobs just got really, really hard.“Every day is frightening,” Mr. Naughton said recently, now nearly two years into his employment at Walmart.Mr. Naughton said this in the dark, his power still out days after Hurricane Ida had barreled through Louisiana. It was 93 degrees. Later he would take another cold shower, also in the dark, in hopes of cooling off before bed.Mr. Naughton lives on a quiet, grassy street of low brick homes with his aging parents, not far from where he attended high school some two decades prior. He had an apartment of his own for a while last year, but his $11.55 hourly wage wasn’t enough to pay the rent, even working full time. So he moved back in with his mother and father, and now lives in fear of bringing the highly contagious Delta variant home to them. (Mr. Naughton is fully vaccinated. But at 78, his father has health issues that prevent him from getting the shots, Mr. Naughton said — health issues that make severe illness likelier should he contract the disease.)Mr. Naughton, 45, lives with his aging parents and worries about bringing the highly contagious Delta variant home to them.Emily Kask for The New York TimesElsewhere in the country, the conversation has begun to move on, away from early Covid alarm and into something more guardedly speculative. What will post-pandemic life look like? How have our priorities shifted? But for vast swaths of the nation, largely untouched by doses from Pfizer and Moderna, it remains late 2020 in many ways.“A lot of people here still don’t believe the virus is real — even when the hospitals are full, even when they have family dying,” Mr. Naughton said. “With the vaccines, one co-worker told me getting it would go against her faith. Another told me it contains baby fetuses and mercury. Someone else said it was created by Bill Gates to insert microchips to track you. I said, ‘Why would he want to track you?’”The conversations Mr. Naughton describes may be epidemiologically out of step, but he and thousands of others seem trapped in an America-right-now vortex, a swirl of politics, belief, resentment and fear. At fast food restaurants, grocery stores, warehouses, nursing homes and anywhere else frontline workers show up each day, a deep schism has taken hold. Workers nervous about the virus find themselves at the mercy of those who aren’t.“If I ask people to wear a mask or socially distance at work, they get mad and tell the manager. Then I have to get coached. If you get coached too many times, you lose your job,” Mr. Naughton said, referring to the company’s system for managing worker infractions. (Charles Crowson, a Walmart spokesman, did not dispute that an accumulation of coachings could lead to termination.)Draped over this dynamic are often the stark realities of poverty, and the stresses of navigating a low-paying job in a high-pressure situation. And so an already strained situation strains further. Bitterness over masking requests, job insecurity, a run on bottled water, vaccine politics — tensions routinely boil over in his store and beyond, Mr. Naughton said.“It wasn’t always like this. It used to be more friendly here. It’s become hostile. People are really on edge. They fight with you in the store, or with each other,” he said. “The other day a woman wanted to fight over the price of potatoes. You can even see it in how people drive, like they have a death wish.”These days Mr. Naughton passes a fair amount of time alone. He burns off stress at the gym, goes on hikes, reads books on politics. (By flashlight, in the days after Hurricane Ida.) The Delta resurgence also dealt a blow to his social life — at one point, concerned about the alarming spread in Louisiana, he canceled plans to see live comedy with a co-worker. She went on without him; “she wasn’t worried about it,” he said.Over the last few months, Mr. Naughton has pinned his hopes on a transfer — there’s another nearby Walmart he believes to be less stressful. After extensive lobbying, he said the move was finally approved. Coincidentally, it’s to the same store where his father routinely shops, Covid risks and all.Mr. Naughton had an apartment of his own last year, but his $11.55 hourly wage wasn’t enough to pay the rent.Emily Kask for The New York Times“He’s stubborn. He goes there for pastries, for Coke. He spends hours there. We tell him not to, it’s not safe,” Mr. Naughton said.With nearly 1.6 million workers, Walmart is the largest private employer in the country. It employs 35,954 people in Louisiana alone, working for one of the 137 Supercenters, discount stores, neighborhood markets or Sam’s Clubs across the state. Covid appears to have been good for the bottom line: During fiscal 2020, the company generated $559 billion in revenue, up $35 billion from the previous year. But labor activists say too little of that money has gone toward work force protections, which in turn has prolonged the pandemic..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}According to United for Respect, a nonprofit labor advocacy group for Walmart and Amazon workers — Mr. Naughton is an outspoken member — safety measures remain deeply insufficient.“Thousands of Walmart associates across the country like Peter have been forced to endure poverty wages and abysmal benefits while working through a deadly pandemic, managing panic-buying sprees and culture wars over mask mandates,” said Bianca Agustin, the accountability director for United for Respect.In a survey the group conducted of Walmart associates — the term the company uses for all non-temporary employees — in May 2020, nearly half said they had come into work sick or would do so, fearing retaliation otherwise. This past April the group released a report with the public health nonprofit Human Impact Partners, finding that Walmart could have prevented at least 7,618 Covid cases and saved 133 lives with a more robust paid sick time policy. (Researchers have estimated that some 125,000 Walmart workers nationwide likely contracted Covid between February 2020 and February 2021.)United for Respect is pushing for five measures in response: hazard pay of $5 per hour; access to adequate paid and unpaid leave; immediate notification of positive cases within a given store; the inclusion of workers in the creation of safety protocols; and protection from retaliation. In the meantime, it has created a Covid reporting tool for workers at Amazon and Walmart. So far almost 1,900 cases have been claimed at 360 stores and facilities.“Walmart lets in people without masks all the time, and social distancing isn’t enforced,” Mr. Naughton said. “Our lives are constantly in danger. They have ‘health ambassadors,’ but all they do is sit at the door offering customers masks. I’ve had to fill in for them. A lot of people just ignore you, or else get angry.”In response, Mr. Crowson, the Walmart spokesman, replied that the company “has worked hard to protect the health and safety of associates and customers. This includes administering no-cost vaccinations, enhanced cleaning practices, daily health screenings and temperature checks for our associates, special bonuses and an emergency leave policy.”For Mr. Naughton, donning his yellow “Proud Walmart Associate” vest each morning and going to work is basic survival in perilous economic times.Emily Kask for The New York TimesFor his part, Mr. Naughton continues fearing work while also fearing the idea of missing any. That’s partly the work ethic he inherited from his father, who never once called in sick to the chemical plant where he spent his career. But it’s also basic survival in perilous economic times. Putting aside any medical implications for him or his loved ones, he worries that contracting Covid could cost him his job. At 45, reliant on Medicaid for health coverage and having no retirement plan to speak of, he continues to don his yellow “Proud Walmart Associate” vest each morning.Over the years Mr. Naughton has worked at fast food restaurants, grocery stores and an amusement park. The idea of finding a more Covid-safe work-from-home gig appeals to him, but his hours at Walmart leave little time for job hunting. Regardless, he says the positions he comes across are “the kind you can’t get without experience, but you can’t get experience without a job.”Asked about the distant universe of office careers and mask-wars-free remote work, Mr. Naughton, he replied that it all feels “unfair.”“They say we’re essential,” he said, “but they treat us like we’re disposable.” More

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    California Senate Passes Bill Reining In Amazon Labor Model

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    The bill would curb production quotas at Amazon and other companies that critics say are excessive and force workers to forgo bathroom breaks.In the latest sign of the growing scrutiny of Amazon’s labor practices, the California State Senate on Wednesday approved a bill that would place limits on production quotas for warehouse workers.The bill, which passed the Senate 26-to-11, was written partly in response to high rates of injuries at Amazon warehouses. The legislation prohibits companies from imposing production quotas that prevent workers from taking state-mandated breaks or using the bathroom when needed, or that keep employers from complying with health and safety laws.The Assembly, which passed an initial version in May, is expected to approve the Senate measure by the end of the state’s legislative session on Friday.“In the Amazon warehouse space, what we’re trying to take on is this increased use of quotas and discipline based on not meeting the quotas, without a human factor in dealing with a reason why a worker might not make a quota,” Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, the bill’s author, said in an interview last week.Gov. Gavin Newsom had not indicated before the vote whether he would sign the bill, but his staff was involved in softening certain provisions that helped pave the way for its passage.Experts said the bill was novel in its attempts to regulate warehouse quotas that are tracked by algorithms, as at Amazon, and make them transparent.“I believe one of Amazon’s biggest competitive advantages over rivals is this ability to monitor their work force, prod workers to work faster and discipline workers when they fail to meet quotas,” said Beth Gutelius, research director at the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois Chicago.“It’s unprecedented for a bill to intervene like this in the ways that technology is used in the workplace,” added Dr. Gutelius, who focuses on warehousing and logistics.Business groups have strongly opposed the bill, complaining that it will lead to costly litigation and hamstring the entire industry even though it is primarily intended to address labor practices at a single company.Amazon has not commented on the bill but has said that it tailors performance targets to individual employees over time based on their experience level and that the targets take into account employee health and safety. The company has emphasized that fewer than 1 percent of terminations are related to underperformance.The bill would require Amazon and other warehouse employers to disclose productivity quotas to workers and regulators, and would allow workers to sue to eliminate quotas that prevent them from taking breaks and following safety protocols.While it is unclear how big an impact the bill would have on Amazon’s operations, limiting the company’s hourly productivity quotas would probably affect its costs more than its ability to continue next-day and same-day delivery.“I think it’s all about money, not about what the system is set up to handle,” said Marc Wulfraat, president of the supply-chain and logistics consulting firm MWPVL International. “If you said to me, ‘Bring the rate down from 350 to 300 per hour,’ I’d say, ‘OK, we need to add more people to the operation — maybe we need 120 people instead of 100.’”A report by the Strategic Organizing Center, a group backed by four labor unions, shows that Amazon’s serious-injury rate nationally was nearly double that of the rest of the warehousing industry last year.“They would say, ‘Always pivot, never twist,’ all this stuff you’re supposed to do,” said Nathan Morin, who worked in an Amazon warehouse in California for more than three years packing and picking items before leaving in December. “But it’s oftentimes impossible to follow the proper body movements while also making rate.”The company has vowed to improve worker safety and said it had spent more than $300 million this year on new safety measures.Amazon is under growing pressure from unions and other groups over its labor practices. A regional office of the National Labor Relations Board has indicated that it is likely to overturn a failed union election at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama on the grounds that the company improperly interfered with the voting.The objections to the election were brought by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which spearheaded the organizing campaign.The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which backed the California bill and whose local officials have helped to derail a tax abatement for Amazon in Indiana and approval for an Amazon facility in Colorado, has committed to providing “all resources necessary” to unionize Amazon workers.“This is a historic victory for workers at Amazon and other major warehouse companies,” Ron Herrera, a Teamsters official who is president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said in a statement. “These workers have been on the front lines throughout the pandemic, while suffering debilitating injuries from unsafe quotas.” More