Early this week, workers from Amazon, Whole Foods and Instacart walked off the job to protest what they say is a lack of protections against COVID-19. Now, Amazon is sharing its plans to increase employee temperature checks and provide surgical masks to workers across the US and Europe.
Amazon says it’s already checking more than 100,000 employees’ temperatures daily, at facilities in Seattle and New York. It plans to introduce temperature checks across the US and Europe, and it will check Whole Foods Market employees, too. By early next week, it expects to test hundreds of thousands of people daily. Anyone with a temperature over 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit will be sent home until they’ve gone three days without a fever.
By early next week, more locations will also supposedly receive surgical masks. The particle-blocking N95 masks Amazon ordered will be donated to medical workers or sold at cost to government and healthcare organizations, Reuters reports.
Amazon also plans to monitor on-site video feeds using software algorithms to ensure workers are appropriately distanced in the workplace, addressing previous concerns about overcrowding.
The new measures do not entirely protect workers from contracting COVID-19 at work, given the prevalence of asymptomatic transmission and the global shortage of more comprehensive protective equipment, like N95 masks. But in the absence of widely available testing, these new policies represent a significant improvement over previous conditions.
Amazon is still hiring. It says it has filled 80,000 of the 100,000 positions it advertised to keep up with the surge in demand caused by the pandemic. It has temporarily increased pay for warehouse and delivery workers, and it expects to spend more than its initial $350 million investment on additional pay. The company says it is being lenient with time off for people who would “rather not come to work,” as well as those who have been diagnosed, show symptoms or were in contact with someone who was diagnosed.
