Very sad all of this is happening, but Amazon should get a little slack.
This should’ve been very clear when we talk about any shutdown — things were never going to work if we all insisted on the same level of sacrifice. Amazon workers must keep working, just as food and transportation workers had to keep going at any cost, and next will be the teachers inside closed rooms with 30 or 40 kids.
I'm generally anti-intervention but do strongly support the notion of driving diversity-of-business within markets. A common measure of market concentration is a sum of squares of market-share percentages (see: https://www.justice.gov/atr/herfindahl-hirschman-index). I'm not sure exactly what to do about this right now but I would suspect Amazon is a huge percentage of the distribution-to-the-home market so should be looked at closely. Their position could be good if they provide excellent Covid policies/procedures (and would be much worse to have a large diversity of participants with poor Covid P&Ps), but could be quite bad if people got scared of Amazon and effectively shutdown-by-virtue-of-disuse a large percentage of the distribution infrastructure in the US...
It's not actually true. I'm not aware of any lockdown or shelter in place orders which don't allow people to buy food or necessities, and plenty of essential businesses remain open, and also deliver.
Also, the vast majority of items being shipped by Amazon remain non-essential goods. Amazon may well be helping people, but their necessity in keeping the country running is overstated.
The company went out of their way to force workers not to get paid for the half-hour each day they wait for security checks, not to mention the peeing in bottles due to how they structure break time.
Given their track record, an employee hostile company like Amazon likely contributed to the situation and was not just a regular victim of circumstance.
They did spend a lot of money on a propaganda campaign encouraging workers to keep working and not take time off because they were "heroes" on the front lines saving lives. Gotta remember what Amazon's actual priorities are.
If being a Warehouse Worker means risking your life or reduced lung capacity, how can we justify this as a %15 an hour job with poor health care benefits.