I read some early recent reports about the comments of an Amazon executive regarding a case of firing an employee. The employee raised concerns about working conditions regarding a coronavirus case in an Amazon facility.
It was a situation when hundreds of thousands of people were dying due to a reason that was unforeseen. It is such a scale that any protocols to handle it are incomplete and rarely known and people need to adapt. When a new negative information arises people develop stress. When we are stressed, we overreact. It's like a thermostat. It overshoots when it is turned on and then it slowly settles to the standard temperature. When this happens, we need to wait, step back, and act with a bit of delay. Any sudden harsh response may cause irreversible damage in PR, health or human life.
Derogatory comments are not uncommon. Amazon lawyers could just look to the East from their window office to Bellevue. Brad Smith, the President and Chief Legal Officer of Microsoft has similar albeit softer remarks on engineers at the time of the Xbox sex party scandal. It was a quick response, Amazon lawyers apologized.
However, there was another remark there that is more interesting. "Make him the most interesting part of the story, and if possible make him the face of the entire union/organizing movement." People have individual rights in the United States and they control their individual image to their family, friends and the public. A trillion dollar company should not apply its power to play a scene with present or former employees. People tend to pay schools to set their own careers on path without someome setting a class or karma. There is a place for that and it is Los Angeles and people sign contracts to act. It was a common habit of Easter Block governments making up trials to confuse the public, but only early in the 1950s.
Indeed, the United States has different standards than other countries regarding workers unions. Firing a worker organizing a union would be illegal in most countries of the European Union. If Amazon still intends to sell services in the rest of the world it might need to soften its responses to protect its PR image elsewhere. Even Microsoft to the east has policies to immediately fire any executives or managers retaliating against employees raising concerns about working conditions. I am an Amazon shareholder and this is my opinion. This would already be a warning sign to me for Mr Zapolski to be the next employee to be fired regarding this case.
Looking at the story, if the employee tested coronavirus positive intentionally and repeatedly did not keep distancing rules, it is a reason to get fired. However, we were in a situation of emergency. The individual is potentially facing a month with a life threatening illness, lack of salary and obligations to pay thousands of dollars on Obamacare or COBRA coverage. He is also targeted by the PR war machine of a trillion dollar company based on the comments above.
For the sake of humanity I would have kept him on the paycheck.
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