- The state of New Jersey has sued Amazon for discrimination against pregnant employees and workers with disabilities.
- Amazon allegedly denied fair requests for accommodation, placing them on unpaid leave, and in some cases, fired them on productivity grounds, the complaint states.
- Amazon has denied the allegations.
New Jersey’s attorney general has sued Amazon.com Inc., alleging the e-commerce giant violated the rights of thousands of pregnant employees and workers with disabilities who work in several of its facilities in the state.
The complaint states that Amazon, the nation’s second-largest private employer, violated the state’s anti-discrimination law in how it treats pregnant employees and employees with disabilities when they request a work accommodation.
Since 2015, Amazon has allegedly placed pregnant and disabled employees on unpaid leave when they request accommodations, denied them reasonable accommodations, and “unreasonably” delayed its responses to workers’ requests, the state found after a years-long investigation.
In some cases, Amazon retaliated against these workers when they sought accommodation by including by firing them based on performance. New Jersey is seeking damages and civil fines from Amazon, as well as court orders requiring it to adjust its policies and submit status reports for five years.
In a response to Reuters and CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson denied the allegations, saying that the company approves more than 99% of pregnancy accommodation requests submitted by workers and does not unfairly deny requests or put workers on leave.
Amazon has faced numerous complaints over the years from staff claiming discrimination and harsh treatment, particularly from female workers. In August, the company settled a proposed class action in California alleging that pregnant employees were not permitted to take leave. Amazon is currently participating in an investigation into similar claims by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment for AMZN stock has remained ‘bearish’ over the past week, following a massive outage in the company’s cloud service provider, Amazon Web Services, which brought multiple applications and websites to a grinding halt.
Users were also debating whether to buy or sell the stock as the company gears up to reveal third-quarter earnings results next week.
Amazon’s stock fell 1.8% in Wednesday’s session and is down 0.7% year-to-date, grossly underperforming the benchmark S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices as well as “Magnificent Seven” peers.
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