New York (AFP)

New York State filed a lawsuit against Amazon on Wednesday, accusing the e-commerce giant of neglect in protecting its employees during the pandemic and retaliation against employees who protested the working conditions.

The lawsuit, filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, accuses Amazon of its management of security at two New York sites: a distribution and delivery center in the district of Queens and a huge warehouse in Staten Island where several rallies were organized in the spring by employees criticizing management for not having sufficiently protected them against Covid-19.

“Since the start of the pandemic, it is clear that Amazon has favored profits over staff and has failed to ensure the good health and safety of its workers,” accuses New York Attorney General Letitia James.

"We care deeply about the health and safety of our employees (...) and do not believe that the prosecutor's complaint paints a true picture of Amazon's response" to the pandemic, said by email to AFP Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for the company.

The New York lawsuit comes just four days after preventative action by Amazon, asking a federal judge to rule that the New York chief prosecutor has no jurisdiction to take legal action over workplace safety issues.

This request was not enough to make Ms. James abandon, whose complaint reflects the rise in anger against Amazon, one of the big winners with other tech groups - Apple, Google, Facebook - of the pandemic that has caused waves of layoffs and left thousands of SMEs and convenience stores behind.

The Seattle group achieved record sales of $ 125.5 billion last quarter.

Its stock gained more than 76% on Wall Street in a year, which helped to increase the fortune of its founder and boss Jeff Bezos, who again became the richest man in the world on paper on Tuesday in front of the co-founder from Tesla, Elon Musk.

- Mountain of challenges -

The New York initiative also adds to the challenges Amazon faces, facing an ongoing vote by employees in a warehouse in Alabama (southeast) to decide whether they want to be represented by a union.

Authorities in California and Connecticut are also examining several of its practices, such as the treatment of merchants on its platform and its sales of digital books.

New York says Amazon is not complying with its cleaning and disinfection requirements at its sites, such as sterilization and ventilation of areas where employees infected with Covid-19 worked.

The process of informing employees about cases of contamination of their colleagues is "legally insufficient" and contact tracing is not "suitable".

The company is also accused of not having closed its sites to have them cleaned up when cases of Covid-19 infections were detected there.

The group would also have continued to discipline employees based on their productivity rate.

"Amazon reduced costs when it came to complying with requirements that could have jeopardized the sales volume and the rate of productivity", further denounces the complaint.

The group is also accused of having taken retaliatory measures against employees who had denounced "risky" working conditions.

This is the case, according to New York State, of Christian Smalls, one of the leaders of the rallies in front of the Staten Island order processing center in the spring.

The company has always disputed this version, explaining that Mr Smalls was fired for taking part in the protest when he was supposed to be in quarantine after coming into contact with an infected colleague.

Ms. James asks justice to force Amazon to change its practices, to compensate dismissed employees and to rehire Christian Smalls among others.

© 2021 AFP