Workers at Amazon, considered “essential” since the start of the pandemic, risk their lives in corporate offices and its massive distribution (order fulfillment) centers so that the rest of us can avoid going shopping in person. Early in spring 2020 when the pandemic began, some brave employees stepped outside their locations to declare their concern for their own safety and the safety of the people they supervised.

The reward? Termination. The first death from COVID of an Amazon employee was on March 31. Gerard Tuzara was a supervisor in the Hawthorne California plant. April press coverage in the NY Times chronicled the incompleteness of safety protections. In addition, Amazon was firing whistleblowers.

So, a coalition of Amazon stock shareholders petitioned the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) to compel the corporation to force executives to create a specific plan for “ensuring safe and healthy workplaces,” given the heightened risks during the pandemic. The request for a corporate plan was filed on Jan 4, 2020.

Amazon challenged the need to adopt the resolution because it believed its vague declaration of “Global Human Rights Principles” (what we at WBI call espoused, lofty, but rarely implemented principles) provided workers with adequate protection. Specifically, the defense was the statement, “We strive to be the most safety-centric organization in the world.” This is a bold aspirational commitment, easily challenged by demanding verification with evidence of actually caring for the safety of all workers.

Amazon.com Inc. asked the Trump-led SEC to exempt them from collective bargaining and a clear plan for employee health and safety [SEC Rule 14A-8(i)(7) and Rule 14A-8(i)(10)] claiming that it was addressed by the Principles. Petitioners responded that Principles provide no specific plans or commitments. The corporate-friendly SEC granted the exemptions. Amazon avoided the PR disaster of having a shareholder revolt at its stockholder meeting, that was certain to garner press. Exemptions were granted on March 27, 2020.

Supervisor Christian Smalls took his complaints about Amazon’s indifference toward COVID public in March. He did lots of interviews. He organized rallies to unionize the famously anti-union corporate behemoth. The SEC exemption came on March 27. On March 30 Amazon terminated Smalls.

Journalist and activist David Sirota reports that six months after the ill-gotten exemptions related to worker safety, Amazon itself reports that 19,816 front-line employees at Amazon and Whole Foods are COVID-positive. And just like Trump claiming that 210,000 dead is less than 2 million dead, Amazon said that nearly 34,000 cases could have been expected given the size of its workforce. Maybe so, but the first death was a supervisor. Why isn’t Amazon giving the public the full COVID count that includes everyone.

20,000 cases, thanks in large part to the SEC agreeing that Amazon could ignore the union and safety-specific shareholder initiatives for change.

In autocratic style, the SEC now has made such bottom-up resolutions more difficult.

Oh, one final point, the richest man in the world, Bezos, has increased his worth by $90 billion during the pandemic.

De-regulation has consequences for human life! To those who think capitalism is not broken in America and the source of misery for the non-wealthy, open your eyes!