Bulletins

New York AG sues Amazon over warehouse conditions

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Amazon Tuesday evening that claims the company failed to provide sufficient health and safety protections from COVID-19 for warehouse workers and that Amazon retaliated against workers who spoke out about working conditions.

The lawsuit alleges that Amazon's cleaning and disinfection processes in a warehouse and sorting center in Staten Island failed to follow New York state and CDC guidelines. It also claims that Amazon used productivity monitoring to prevent workers from taking the time to fully protect themselves and their workstations, and that the company failed to maintain a robust and appropriate contact-tracing program.

The suit is based on the AG's investigation into an Amazon warehouse and sorting facility in Staten Island following both public complaints and protests about working conditions by two employees, one of whom was later fired from the company. Christian Smalls was dismissed after leading a small protest in an Amazon parking lot, and Amazon justified his firing by claiming that he violated social distancing and quarantine guidelines by hosting the protest. Smalls then filed a class-action lawsuit against the company in November.

Amazon filed a pre-emptive suit against the AG last week, claiming that James had threatened to sue Amazon if the company did not reduce worker productivity requirements, subsidize bus service and rehire Smalls. In the suit, Amazon also asked that James be required to say that she does not have authority over workplace safety rules during the pandemic.

In October, Amazon said that almost 20,000 workers had tested positive for the coronavirus between March and September at a positivity rate of around 1.4%, which was lower than overall community transmission rates.

"We care deeply about the health and safety of our employees, as demonstrated in our filing last week, and we don't believe the Attorney General's filing presents an accurate picture of Amazon's industry-leading response to the pandemic," said Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, in a statement.

 Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

amazon workers coronavirus pandemic
Latest Bulletins

Apple retail workers withdraw bid for union

Apple store workers in Atlanta were reportedly intimidated out of hosting a union election, according to Bloomberg.

Keep Reading Show less

A proposed crypto bill would hand oversight role to CFTC

A draft of a major crypto bill from Sens. Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand seeks to add more clarity to crypto regulation, and appears to propose a far bigger role for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Keep Reading Show less

The SEC has so many questions for Elon Musk

The SEC would like Elon Musk to explain himself. In a letter the agency sent Musk last month, released Friday, a top SEC lawyer asked pointed questions about filings Musk made about his growing stake in Twitter.

Keep Reading Show less

Twitter won't accept board resignation of Elon Musk ally

Twitter will not accept the resignation of Egon Durban, a close ally of Elon Musk, from his position on its board, the company said in a filing on Friday.

Keep Reading Show less

DoorDash boosts diversity, but not in tech roles

Almost 40% of DoorDash’s new U.S. hires last year were either Black or Latino, the company revealed Thursday in its 2021 diversity report. But few of those hires joined in technical roles, where DoorDash’s numbers lag behind companies like Uber and Lyft.

Keep Reading Show less

Elon Musk keeps getting sued by Twitter shareholders

Stop us if you've heard this one before: A Twitter shareholder is suing Elon Musk for allegedly manipulating the company's stock price.

The Verge reported that the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday night in a federal district court in San Francisco, alleges that Musk made statements "designed to create doubt" about the deal and drive Twitter's share price down significantly, including a tweet which claimed that it "cannot move forward" without proof that less than 5% of Twitter's users are bots.

Keep Reading Show less

PayPal is laying off more workers after cutting HQ staff

Yet another tech company is slashing its workforce: PayPal has reportedly started laying off employees in risk management and operations just weeks after laying off more than 80 employees at its San Jose headquarters.

Keep Reading Show less

Meta accuses Apple of 'self-serving tactics' on gaming app restrictions

Facebook parent company Meta is accusing Apple of harming competition in the mobile app marketplace through restrictions on iOS software surrounding game streaming and other related technologies, according to a new filing with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration published Thursday.

Keep Reading Show less

The CFPB wants banks and lenders to explain their algorithms

The CFPB has a message for banks and lenders: You've got to explain your algorithms. The agency stressed in a new circular that financial services companies must give a clear explanation for denying a credit application and cannot simply argue that the systems they use are “too complicated.”

Keep Reading Show less

Microsoft is the latest tech giant to slow hiring

Microsoft is slowing hiring for its Windows, Office and Teams software groups, Bloomberg reported Thursday, joining a growing list of tech companies that have pumped the brakes in the light of the economic downturn.

Keep Reading Show less

Apple is raising its retail hourly starting salary to $22

As inflation levels continue to rise and with retail labor union drives around the country, Apple is increasing its starting hourly wage from $20 to $22 an hour for retail workers.

Keep Reading Show less

Cloud security firm Lacework lays ​off 20% of staff

A well-funded startup in the cybersecurity industry, Lacework, has become the latest tech firm to disclose a major round of layoffs amid fears of a broader economic slowdown.

Keep Reading Show less

Nvidia joins hiring slowdown

Nvidia plans to slow hiring later this year, following similar moves from Lyft, Snap, Uber, Meta, Salesforce, Coinbase and others.

Keep Reading Show less

Twitter used account security data to target ads. Now it has to pay up.

The Federal Trade Commission is charging Twitter for "deceptively" using security data — the phone numbers and emails it asked users to input to secure their accounts — to actually target ads to them, the agency announced Wednesday. The FTC will require that the company pay $150 million.

Keep Reading Show less

Sonos' free streaming service moves beyond its speakers

Sonos just launched its Sonos Radio service on the web, albeit in a somewhat limited fashion: A new Sonos Radio website features 45-minute samples from some of the service’s channels, as well as individual shows and mixes. The service was previously only available on Sonos speakers. The site was first spotted by a Reddit user.

Keep Reading Show less

Bolt lays off employees in a company restructuring

Bolt told employees Wednesday that the company would undergo “several structural changes” — in other words, layoffs — in an effort to secure its financial position.

Keep Reading Show less

Startups are likely to get access to the national AI research cloud

A federally funded AI research cloud is moving forward, and startups should be able to join the party.

A task force set up to design The National AI Research Resource, or NAIRR, a repository of data, tools and computing power needed to develop machine learning and other AI systems, published a preliminary report today outlining plans and expectations for the service.

Keep Reading Show less

Finland’s binding climate negative goal is the new gold standard

Carbon dioxide removal will soon be written into Finnish law: In a historic Wednesday vote, the country’s Parliament approved a new Climate Change Act that would commit the country to carbon neutrality by 2035, and carbon negativity by 2040.

Keep Reading Show less

Peter Thiel is officially done with Meta

Peter Thiel has officially stepped down from Meta's board, a position he's held since Facebook was in its infancy. The company announced that Thiel would be leaving the board in February.

Now, Thiel looks poised to spend even more of his time, attention and money on backing conservative political candidates ahead of the midterms. He's already a top donor to Ohio senate candidate J.D. Vance and Arizona senate candidate Blake Masters, former president of the Thiel foundation. Thiel recently spent another $3.5 million on Masters' campaign.

Keep Reading Show less

Jack Dorsey is leaving Twitter's board of directors

In an expected move, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is leaving the company's board of directors, effective Wednesday. He made his resignation as a director formal at the company's annual shareholder meeting, where he did not stand for reelection, but had set his departure from the board in motion last fall when he stepped down as Twitter CEO.

Keep Reading Show less

Amazon defeats all 15 shareholders proposals at annual meeting

Amazon successfully beat back a record-high 15 proposals from activists and worker advocates at its annual shareholder meeting today, maintaining the company’s track record of winning votes despite increased enthusiasm for the proposals.

Keep Reading Show less

Remote learning apps tracked millions of kids around the world

A new comprehensive report has found that many remote learning apps used during the pandemic tracked students and shared their information with advertisers for targeted ads.

The report by Human Rights Watch examined 164 ed tech tools and websites used in the US and 48 other countries and found that 89% of the apps "appeared to engage in data practices that put children’s rights at risk.” Some of those apps were found to be sharing that data with marketers and data brokers.

Keep Reading Show less

Do Kwon is reviving the Terra blockchain after UST's fall

Just weeks after one of the Terra blockchain's signature cryptocurrencies collapsed, here comes the reboot.

Token holders approved a plan to relaunch the Terra blockchain and distribute new tokens of the luna cryptocurrency by a wide margin Wednesday morning. Do Kwon, the crypto entrepreneur behind Terra, offered the plan as a way to salvage the Terra blockchain after luna and the connected UST algorithmic stablecoin, also known as TerraUSD, lost nearly all value in a sell-off after it lost its peg to the dollar earlier this month.

Keep Reading Show less

Lyft responds to the economic downturn

Lyft has joined Uber, Meta, Robinhood and a slew of other tech companies in slowing hiring and focusing on critical open roles, though the company is reportedly not planning layoffs, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Keep Reading Show less

Tesla to Texas: Help us help you

Tesla is pushing for changes to Texas’ energy market rules that would allow anyone with solar panels or battery storage to essentially sell excess power back to the grid. The company wants residential owners to be able to participate in the market, including, of course, owners of Tesla's residential products, like its Powerwall.

Tesla is framing its ask as a bid to insulate the Texas grid from the kinds of demand spikes that have caused major blackouts in the past: a gesture of good corporate citizenship, if you will. It doesn’t hurt that it would come with the added benefit of making Tesla’s products even more attractive.

Keep Reading Show less
Bulletins