By Eliab Taïrou and Marianne Poliquin, from our Labour and Employment Law Group
April 3, 2020 — In case you missed it, it was reported in the news that on March 30, 2020, Amazon had fired a New York warehouse worker who had led a walkout on the same day over coronavirus concerns.
The stance of Amazon is that the worker, Chris Smalls, had been ordered to quarantine at home with pay for 14 days as he had been in close contact with a co-worker who was declared positive to the virus. Despite such instructions, the worker came on site and further put the teams at risk. Amazon immediately terminated the worker citing multiple safety issues. Amazon also affirmed that the company takes extreme measures for safety.