There are many reasons Tonya Ramsay might have just kept working. The 29-year-old, who works in the shipping department of an Amazon.com Inc. warehouse outside Detroit, pays the mortgage at the house where she lives with her boyfriend and 11-year-old son. But she was scared. Managers at the 855,000-square-foot facility where Ramsay works said two of her co-workers had been diagnosed with Covid-19. Ramsay suspected—correctly, it turns out—there were more cases to be identified.
Historically, Michigan is union territory. Amazon isn’t. The walkout at Ramsay’s warehouse capped a remarkable 72 hours in the online retailer’s occasionally tense relationship with its workforce. Employees at depots in three states staged walkouts or strikes, and workers at Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market called a sickout.
This story is from the April 13, 2020 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek.
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This story is from the April 13, 2020 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek.
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