It came as a shock to Emily Cunningham and her colleague Maren Costa when they were fired on Good Friday.
The two former Amazon user-experience designers had warned of the health risks for warehouse workers during the Covid-19 crisis and, in a petition to the CEO in late March, had demanded improved safety protocols, enhanced benefits and facility shut-downs during the pandemic.
Their efforts were celebrated on social media but Costa wrote that they’d just been “fighting for our colleagues’ safety in the time of Covid”.
The case is atypical because protest usually comes from lower-paid warehouse workers. Cunningham and Costa inspired Timothy Bray, senior principal engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS), to “quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistle-blowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19”. The company now has more than four known Covid-19 cases at each of its US warehouses.
Amazon’s displeasure with Cunningham and...