Amazon Initially Denied Paid Leave To Black Woman Employee Run Over, Shot In New Orleans Attack
The Amazon.com, Inc. BHM1 fulfillment center is seen before sunrise on March 29, 2021, in Bessemer, Alabama. | Source: PATRICK T. FALLON / Getty
In the latest example of shameless corporate greed and a basic disregard for human rights, an Amazon warehouse initially denied a request for a leave of absence by an employee who was shot after being struck by the truck driven in the deadly New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans.
Alexis Scott-Windham not only had her right foot run over by the pickup truck that plowed into a crowd on the heavily populated Bourbon Street but the 23-year-old Mobile, Alabama, resident was also subsequently shot in the same foot during the attack that killed at least 15 people and injured dozens more.
MORE: Here’s What We Know About The Victims Of The Bourbon Street New Year’s Eve Attack
“He was coming so fast, there wasn’t any time to move all the way out the way,” Scott-Windham told NOLA.com of the driver, identified by law enforcement as Shamsud-Din Jabbar. “I was just blessed that I only got shot in the foot and I made it back home.”
But that blessing was reportedly initially greeted with apparent indifference by the Amazon warehouse that employs Scott-Windham, the mother of an infant who still has a bullet lodged in her foot and suffered multiple fractures.
“The Amazon warehouse where she works originally denied her request for a leave of absence,” NOLA.com reported before adding later: “but the company said in a statement Friday that they’ve since spoken with her and given her time off with pay.”
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told NOLA.com of Scott-Windham: “We wish her a full recovery and look forward to welcoming her back to work once she’s able.”
It was unclear what made Amazon have a change of heart, what with the corporate conglomerate’s reputation for exploiting its workers.
Amazon’s documented history of worker exploitation
Amazon has consistently been at the heart of employment-based disputes centered on better pay, treatment and conditions for its workers.
Notably, in 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) found that Amazon failed “to keep workers safe and delivered hazard alert letters for exposing workers to ergonomic hazards.” In those findings, DOL also determined that “Amazon exposed warehouse workers to a high risk of low back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders.”
Occupational safety reports show that Amazon has a higher rate of injuries than other warehouses.
This past June, Amazon Labor Union members overwhelmingly voted to join the 1.3 million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters, something that had been a long time coming for employment advocates. Amazon had previously resisted organized labor efforts for years.
Notably, in 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning, Amazon fired Christian Smalls, a worker at its Staten Island fulfillment center in New York City. Smalls was let go almost immediately after he led a group of co-workers in a walkout from the building in protest over accusations that Amazon inadequately responded to the pandemic and didn’t safeguard their workers, whose demands were simply for the building to be temporarily closed and more vigorously sanitized and for employees to be paid during the hiatus, considering a few of them had become sick.
According to Vice, Amazon held an internal leadership meeting discussing their response to the coronavirus pandemic where billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos was even present. In leaked notes for the meeting, the Staten Island incident came up and they used racist tropes to describe Smalls deeming him “not smart or articulate.”
Amazon says they fired Smalls because he violated a company-imposed 14-day quarantine after he came in contact with a worker who tested positive for the coronavirus. However, Smalls says the employee who tested positive had contact with many other workers for longer periods of time before her test came back. He argues that he was singled out after pleading with management to sanitize the warehouse and to be more transparent about the number of employees who were sick.
Notes uncovered from Amazon General Counsel David Zapolsky urged company executives to use Smalls to discredit the wider labor movement at Amazon, considering employees at an NYC warehouse known as JFK8 ignited an effort to unionize in 2018.
In 2022, Smalls was invited to testify before a Senate Budget Committee hearing titled “Should Taxpayer Dollars Go to Companies that Violate Labor Laws?”
This is America.
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