CORONAVIRUS: French court orders Amazon limit deliveries to safeguard workers health

A French court has ruled that Amazon must limit its operations to delivering only essential goods while it evaluates workers’ risks of coronavirus exposure.

WHILE carrying out the health evaluation, Amazon can prepare and deliver only “food, hygiene and medical products,” the court said.

The ruling said the company has “obviously ignored its obligations to the security and health of its workers.” The company will only be allowed to work on receiving, preparing and sending food, hygiene products and medications for up to a month, until the risk evaluation system is set up.

The trade union that filed the case on April 8 wrote in a statement that Amazon was continuing to work during the pandemic “as if nothing happened” and that the situation in the warehouses was a “sanitary and social bomb that is exploding and concerns 10,000 direct employees and an army of temporary workers and delivery workers.”

Last week the Labour ministry notified the company about its poor protective measures for employees at five of the six warehouses. The company has already reduced the number of items it has been shipping during the pandemic. The ruling will force the company to reduce its workforce and put people on paid leave, as essential goods represent only 10 per cent of what the company ships in France.

Any delay in implementing the ruling is liable to a fine of a million euros a day.