KENT, Wash. — So long, door desk. Hello, plexiglass-enclosed roaming human help desk.
Not far from where hundreds of robots were buzzing about the floor of Amazon’s sprawling BFI4 fulfillment center south of Seattle this week, a human stood in her own wheeled contraption. The innovation-in-progress, intended to allow a supervisor to roll up to various work stations and provide support behind a protective barrier, is one of the more striking ways the tech giant is addressing employee safety in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Across nearly 1 million square feet, in support of 3,000 workers at this facility, Amazon has deployed mass quantities of hand sanitizer, masks, signage and more to allow workers to pick, sort, pack and ship in the same space.
It’s been a rough few months for the tech giant, as it’s grappled with an unprecedented surge in demand for the products it delivers while also seeing the coronavirus take a significant toll on the very workers who fulfill orders at its facilities across the country.
While Amazon has repeatedly declined to disclose data on the number of infections across its workforce, at least eight warehouse workers have died from the virus. A worker who organized an early walkout over safety at a New York facility was fired — Amazon insists it was for breaking quarantine, not for organizing the walkout — and several employees and their relatives are suing the company for what they call inadequate safety measures.
Employee activists are pressing the company to better protect warehouse workers as part of a larger campaign against what they call “a vein of toxicity” running through the company. CNBC reported Friday that the New York Attorney General’s office is interviewing Amazon workers about claims of retaliation against employees as part of an investigation into its labor practices.
Amazon presents a very different picture. Its public relations campaign, seeking to demonstrate its commitment to safety, has included a run of television commercials featuring warehouse workers, and delivery drivers, too. The company extended an invitation to GeekWire to tour the Kent facility as part of a media push that has attracted recent reports by The New York Times, Bloomberg and 60 Minutes.
The company says it’s spending $800 million on COVID-19 safety precautions, and an unprecedented $4 billion on its larger COVID-19 initiatives this quarter alone. From the retraining and reassigning of workers to the protective equipment put in place, Amazon’s company-wide efforts are on full display in Kent.
Upon entering the building, which is roughly the size of 20 football fields, employees are greeted first by multiple little stands topped with large hand sanitizer dispensers. Next to all the new signage and lanes of colorful tape on the floors, it’s the most ubiquitous sign that cleanliness is priority one these days.
There’s no getting in without a quick scan of your temperature, from a device monitored by an associate behind a makeshift plexiglass wall. Another station of the same type features an associate handing out required masks to anyone who showed up without one. Each mask is passed through a window, held out via kitchen tongs that could have been ordered on Amazon.
From one end of the facility to the other, down every hallway and past lunchrooms, restrooms, conveyor belts and more, there is new tape on the floors guiding employees in the directions they should be walking and the distance they should be standing between one another.
“I can’t even imagine how many miles of tape have been used,” said Kelly Cheeseman, an Amazon spokeswoman and my tour guide.
Spaces where employees used to gather in groups for mini pep rallies are now empty, replaced with posters that tell them how to stretch and limber up before getting to work. The company says it has updated 150 processes to protect worker safety.
Human resources workers staff stations behind plexiglass, conversing with employees via telephone, answering questions about COVID-19 and anything else of concern.
At a busy intersection near a break room and the main floor of the warehouse, an associate in a neon-striped vest waves like a COVID traffic cop as he spots employees walking and talking too close to one another. The associate gives a signal, spreading his arms apart.
Cheeseman said cameras are also watching, using artificial intelligence and machine learning to look at what the humans might be missing when it comes to distancing. Any tech insight is sent to building management to better inform how everyone is doing. In the moment it feels as if a hug or a high-five would be enough to bring the entire operation to a screeching standstill.
If anyone is smiling, it’s tough to tell behind all the masks. At least the company’s smiley logo is constantly streaming by on a sea of cardboard boxes.
Inside the break room, employees are spread out, seated one per table, distanced the required six feet apart. It is here where masks are allowed to be lowered so people can actually eat or use their faces to unlock smartphones.
Some of the tables are pushed to face each other, and socializing in the age of social distancing gives off a hint of normalcy in a place that has been transformed by new norms.
A training room where employees can take classes to enhance their career options has been turned into a testing site, where employees can self-administer swab tests and get results from an outside agency. The room is full of bulked-up versions of the famed Amazon door desks, and more tape signaling where to stand and where to toss waste.
Up a few flights of stairs, everyone avoids grabbing the handrails and doors are pushed open with elbows or butts. This despite the fact that we’re told janitorial services have been stepped up and surfaces are disinfected every 75 minutes.
Amazon has hired 175,000 people during the crisis, including 1,000 in the Kent facility. Those numbers would make it seem like they’d be standing on top of one another, but at certain work stations there’s far more than six feet between humans, and they interact more with robots than with each other.
The dance of the robots, inside Amazon’s massive warehouse facility in Kent, Wash. https://t.co/uizvZ6Fk5l pic.twitter.com/41OkuIJvUf
— Kurt Schlosser (@kslosh) June 12, 2020
We were able to talk freely with workers on our guided tour, but with an Amazon representative standing near, we didn’t exactly get any fodder for the New York AG’s investigation.
Mary Peters has been a stower at Amazon for less than a year, unboxing products, scanning them and putting them on electronic shelves so they’re ready to be purchased on the company’s website. She said she enjoys the work, even during the heightened risk of the pandemic.
“I love it, to be very honest,” Peters said. “I look at it as a part of serving our customers while we’re going through COVID-19.”
Adjusting her mask as she picked and placed items amid the constant whir of robots and hum of conveyor belts, Peters said she hasn’t been apprehensive about coming to work. She believes the company has been up front about what’s happening, and what workers need to know to protect themselves.
“I feel safe,” she said.
