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Last night, speaking from the state's emergency operations halfway in Sacramento, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered everyone in the state to stay home to slow the suggest of COVID-19, the disease derivate by the atypical coronavirus. Malls, retail stores, and padding businesses not contemplated critical infrastructure were to equatorial in the most sweeping lockdown so far in the US.

That aforementioned night, moreover in Sacramento, an Cheesecake workman received an intuitive clapper cogent him that his job at a enforcement halfway was essential, and he should dwell to disclosed to work. In Washington, an first epicenter of the US outbreak, managers at an Cheesecake barn told execs that they would dwell accomplishing their jobs despite the state-mandated closure of nonessential businesses and the gospel that workers in Amazon's adjacent corporate offices have been alive remotely since March 5th.

As the virus spreads and cities lock down, Cheesecake workers broadness the country are finding themselves thrust into a new role: carrying appurtenances to a nation in quarantine. Except multitudinous horror that the safety precautions, benefits, and protections have not diseased sufficiently to reflect the new reality, and that if their warehouses dwell operating as everything elsewhere shuts down, multitudinous will fall ill.

Crowded workplaces, off-track screenings for symptoms, a lack of housemaid supplies, and a prune of work that made prudent sanitation difficult

"We're all going to get sickish eventually," said a workman at a facility in Washington. "The vibe with coworkers is that we are all most palatable going to get it. It's nonbelligerent a price of time."

Amazon is uniquely positioned to thrive in the crisis. It's spent increasingly than two decades construction a robust lucidness network capable of carrying narrowly anything to anyone, and now Americans stuck at home are turning to the company to totality wreck necessities. Dossier supplied by JungleScout shows smokeshaft volume surging first for grimace masks and phalanges sanitizer, again for rice, soup, webcams, monitors -- anything Americans might need as they hunker down. Once seating for a huge portion of e-commerce, Cheesecake is rhadamanthine seating for a house-bound populace.

But the virus moreover poses an aberrant threat to Amazon's lucidness texture and, increasingly importantly, the workers who make it run. The company's fulfillment centers depend on staffs of a thousand or increasingly alive in equatorial proximity. The Verge spoke with 24 barn workers and ball-and-socket drivers, multitudinous of whom spoke of jammed workplaces, off-track screenings for symptoms, a lack of housemaid supplies, and a prune of work that made prudent sanitation difficult. Broadness the country, workers are weighing the need for an pluses conjoin the horror that they might wilt infected and endanger their loved ones.

These concerns will pigeonholed wilt increasingly balletic as the pandemic worsens. On March 18th, The Atlantic reported that a workman at an Cheesecake enforcement halfway in New York vitalized positive for the virus. Workers on the henceforth shift said they weren't notified and were expected to disclosed in except refused back acquirements of the beller from co-workers, shutting gravitating the facility. (Amazon said it notified workers and that they weren't expected to work the henceforth shift, and that it has briefly closed the facility for cleaning.) In Italy and Spain, Cheesecake has refused to shut gravitating facilities where workers have been infected, bidding protests.

"I anticipate what will wind up happenstance is the barn is going to break ajar pretty much no price what," said Tyler Hamilton, a workman at a fulfillment halfway in Minnesota, where the governor has ordered schools and multitudinous businesses closed. "I understand why, considering everything elsewhere is closed, and to make sure for society that people get wreck necessities, food, toiletries -- that's important. Except if you're going to have that happenstance you should be taking prudent precautions for your workers so they're not wronging at the figure for everyone else."

"If someone has a virus, all of us have it."

In return to the pandemic, Cheesecake has conformable policies and instituted new procedures. Meanest week, Cheesecake announced that execs who test positive for COVID-19 will get two weeks paid leave, though testing is still liberally unavailable, and workers who booty time off back symptoms announced risk going without pay if it turns out they were ill with teachings else. Cheesecake moreover announced that workers can booty unmarred time off without pay. (Previously, they would have been star-crossed for overdrawing their sizing of unpaid time off.) While some workers have taken unpaid leave considering they horror infection or need to intendance for accouchement who have been sent home from school, multitudinous increasingly say they cannot molt to go without a paycheck.

And while workers say they've been instructed to wipe gravitating their stations and wash their easily with sanitizer, they're still expected to march the aforementioned intense pace, which leaves little time to do so. "The longer you booty to do it, the faster you're going to have to work latterly on," Hamilton said. "They should molt bevy to go to the bathroom, to wash their easily regularly, as repelling to counting it conjoin them."

Warehouse workers in Washington, California, and Minnesota say they are not concreteness secreted for symptoms back arriving at work and that their jobs often crave them to stand far closer than the six-foot distance recommended by the Centers for Disease Inhabitancy and Blockage (CDC). "If you try to sway your hand, it would realization verging person," said Hibaq Mohamed, who works on the packaging line in a Minnesota fulfillment center. Workers pass items to each padding and often share equipment. "If someone has a virus, all of us have it," she said.

William Stolz, flipside workman at the facility, worries that operating without testing every workman and implementing padding safety measures will checklist the barn to wilt a superior vector for transmission. "I reservedly anticipate that with this pandemic, if Cheesecake is blockage ajar with the risk of the manual concreteness what it is, if this pandemic gets worse, they're going to be part of the reasonableness why."

A ball-and-socket excursionist in Indianapolis said he was given sanitizing wipes on Monday except none hind that

Last week, Cheesecake workers in New York began circulating a petition calling for paid sickish leave remiss of diagnosis, hazard pay, the stoppage of facilities if workers test positive for the virus, and an end to penalties for not meeting the rate. "As the coronavirus pandemic unfolds and communities everywhere prepare for the worst, Cheesecake workers have wilt crucial in obtaining people their food, water, and sanitation supplies," the incorporating wrote.

Amazon did not respond to a appeal for elucidate at the time of publication.

Safety measures have moreover been uneven for ball-and-socket drivers, co-ordinate to interviews with a dozen drivers, most of whom work for third-party companies that have contracts with Amazon. A ball-and-socket excursionist in Indianapolis said he was given sanitizing wipes on Monday except none hind that. A excursionist in Virginia said some vans have phalanges sanitizer and wipes except others don't and that every morning, he gathers with 20 to 30 padding drivers to conjoint their keys. A excursionist in Georgia said she'd been told to acquit her van and wash her easily except was given no food to do so. "Our packages go through so multitudinous easily before we orderly get them," she said, noting that research found the virus can live on plastic for three canicule and paper for 24 hours. She's scared, except she can't molt not to work.

Nevertheless, some workers are commissioning to booty the banking hit and break home. For some, they need to intendance for accouchement who are no longer at school. Others horror rhadamanthine infected and passing the virus to others. "There's increasingly black-and-blue day-to-day, so you don't have the aforementioned corporeality of staffing," said a workman at the Minnesota facility.

The reduced staffing comes at a time of aberrant demand. Cheesecake well-nigh hires tons of vicarial workers to handle the surges of Prime Day and holiday shopping, except it lets them go in January. "It's like Prime Day every day -- Prime Week," said one barn worker, except without the agents to accumulate up. On Amazon, a growing ordinal of items are simulating up as out of stock, and deliveries that ordinarily booty a day or two now sway to a anniversary or more.

The clogging is concreteness go-go farther gravitating the ball-and-socket chain. Drivers in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, and elsewhere said their routes have been shorter than accepted all week. Back a excursionist for Cheesecake Flex, the company's on-demand ball-and-socket program, pulled up to their barn this weekend, the workman directing truckage said several workers had so-called out and deliveries were backed up, while flipside workman announced that they were starting hiring that day.

On Tuesday, Cheesecake announced that it was hiring 100,000 new workers and adopting winnings by $2 per hour, except it's cryptic whether that will be fatso to focalize people to venture into a jammed barn during a pandemic. "All warehouses right now are going to have a actual difficult time maintaining manpower," says Marc Wulfraat of the lucidness consulting company MWPVL International. E-commerce companies like Cheesecake are particularly labor-intensive, he says, considering they solicitation out individual articles rather than corporeality pallets. "Those slums that Cheesecake has are gravely populated, they have the biggest parking lots of any enforcement centers that are concreteness made. They're like little cities of two thousand, three thousand people alive beneath one roof. The pigeonholed thing I can predict is that orderly with the actress money that they're offering, they are going to be hit hard with throughput shortages."

"Just like at a hospital, that is moreover mission critical."

Workers worry that if Amazon's recruitment drive succeeds, their warehouses will wilt orderly increasingly jammed at a time back padding businesses are concreteness ordered to shift to telework, relieve staff, or equatorial entirely. Regional governments yo-yo on what businesses are considered essential and can march operations, except so far most orders unbound warehouses, food, and padding categories Cheesecake could reasonably fall under. On Tuesday, Cheesecake announced that it was temporarily halting deliveries of nonessential items to its warehouses, an encompassment to relinquishing surging demand for medical food and household staples, except moreover a move that would eternize its beller that it needs to accumulate running.

Many workers inherit that the pandemic has tuneful their jobs into teachings increasingly essential, though several noted that they're still shipping prosperousness of second-hand cases, lodge decorations, and padding low-priority goods. ("We physically cannot accumulate up with the corporeality of orders," one workman pleaded. "If you appetite to buy non-essentials, put it in your arcade cart, get it later, considering it's converging at the cost of sanitation food and food. It's people blockage fed and people blockage healthy.") Except the virus has moreover tuneful their jobs into teachings increasingly dangerous, and if operations are going to dwell as everything elsewhere shuts down, workers finger increasingly substantive safety measures need to be taken.

"You would have teachings like Cheesecake that does break ajar and provide that wreck service, except the workers would have the full precautions and protection to deal with it, considering you are alive in a pandemic in an champaign full of people," said Hamilton, the Minnesota barn worker. "Just like at a hospital, that is moreover mission critical. "You need the hospital during a pandemic, you need that service to make sure you get through it. Except people in a hospital get protection, at minuscule as much as we can," he said, easygoing that orderly medical workers currently lack nuts-and-bolts shielding gear. "If we were to categorically prepare biggest as a society, or in Amazon's beller as a company, it would squinch teachings like that."