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Jane Fonda leads new star-studded fight against Amazon

A group of Hollywood actors is calling on Amazon to respond to allegations from pregnant workers that the company is failing to offer them accommodations in their warehouses, leading to severe health complications and even miscarriages.Jane Fonda, Rosario Dawson, Cynthia Nixon, Sally Field, Lily Tomlin, Chelsea Handler and Pamela Adlon signed onto the letter, which was sent Friday to Edith Cooper, the chair of Amazon’s Leadership Development and Compensation Committee. The actors signed onto the letter after labor rights leader Erica Smiley won an award in June from the Women’s Media Center, which is co-founded by Fonda, and used the platform to speak about the issues facing pregnant Amazon workers.In the letter, the actors reference the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which went into effect in the summer of 2023. It requires employers to work in good faith to accommodate pregnancy-related needs, including time off for doctor’s appointments or workplace accommodations like a stool to sit on or more frequent breaks. But pregnant workers in Amazon’s warehouses have alleged that Amazon refused to accommodate them when they asked for lighter duty. They say the company refused to hear their concerns, forcing them to quit or firing them.“These are not isolated incidents,” the letter said. “Instead, they are part of a pattern of Amazon workers being seriously injured, and then being treated as disposable — pushed into medical debt and poverty because Amazon refuses to take responsibility and, in many cases, simply fires them, leaving them without income or an ability to secure new work as they struggle to heal from their Amazon-induced disabilities.”Amazon told The 19th in a statement that the safety of its workers is extremely important.“We have comprehensive policies and programs for employees who may need accommodations or restricted work. We're committed to ensuring that they have the assistance they need to perform their jobs through our robust accommodation process,” Amazon said. “If an employee believes that these policies have been violated, they should report it immediately.”According to the letter, workers have been requesting a meeting with Cooper, the company’s board of directors and Sarah Rhoads, the vice president of safety, since July 2024. Amazon has not responded, according to the Expose Amazon campaign, an effort that has been spotlighting stories of workers injured on the job, including one worker who died, for several years.Last year, Amazon shareholders requested that the board commission an audit of working conditions inside company warehouses. But the proposal was rejected in May. In its response, Amazon said the proposal relied on “false, misinformed and misleading claims about our injury rates made by outside groups with ulterior motives,” and added that the company has improved its incident rates — a measure of how often injuries occur at work — by 34 percent from 2019 to 2024. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos set a goal of reducing incident rates 50 percent by this year.Amazon added that the Leadership Development and Compensation Committee, which Cooper leads, has direct oversight of workplace safety issues and “regularly reviews these matters.”It’s not the first time Amazon’s alleged treatment of pregnant workers has drawn attention. In 2021, a group of six senators also sent a letter to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), calling for a federal probe into Amazon’s treatment of pregnant workers in its warehouses. That investigation appears to be ongoing, according to an attorney representing a pregnant Amazon worker in a recent lawsuit.That was before the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act went into effect, however. Now, the EEOC, which is charged with enforcing the act, would also be tasked with investigations that fall under the new law. But after President Donald Trump fired two members of the agency earlier this year, the EEOC lacks a quorum to enact any policy directives, and its acting chair, Andrea Lucas, is opposed to some of the protections established in the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act that would allow workers to take time off to seek an abortion. That means it’s unclear how much enforcement the agency is currently taking on on behalf of pregnant workers.For the past several years, the Expose Amazon campaign has also been highlighting stories of incidents inside Amazon’s warehouses, painting a picture of strenuous working conditions where worker needs are rarely met. More recently, the group has been collecting dozens of stories from pregnant workers who say they have been denied reasonable accommodations at work. Some of those charges have been filed with the EEOC.The letter came ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ lavish Venice wedding to Lauren Sanchez Bezos, which was met with protests and demonstrations from hundreds who called it an exploitation of the city.Smiley, the executive director of Jobs with Justice, a labor rights organization, said they’ve seen a pattern of reports among Amazon workers who say they are being asked to climb tall ladders with their baby bumps, speed across the shop floor, and often work with few or no bathroom breaks — even with the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act now in effect nationwide.The new law was designed to help workers in these exact kinds of jobs, but, Smiley said, “no matter how good the law is, if the companies are not going to enforce it … it’s just words.”