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"Amazon is not heaven, it is a hostile site." Latinos denounce discrimination and racism in the company

2022-12-08T01:09:44.432Z


In the company that generates the most jobs in the country, 23.6% of the workforce is Latino, but some employees say that success hides stories of harassment and racism.


Diana Cuervo says that seeing a package from Amazon does not mean the satisfaction of receiving a new product, but the memory of months of stress due to the constant racist comments from her former boss at the Amazon warehouse where she worked.

In mid-2020, after a rigorous selection process, he moved from New York to the west coast of the country, to Everett, Washington, with the hope of starting a career at the management level at the gigantic Amazon, the second company with the most jobs generated in the United States after Walmart.

According to the story of Cuervo, who was born in Colombia, from day one her former boss, Christopher Stoia, made comments about Hispanics: “You must be below us;

Latinos should be picking up boxes, not as supervisors."

Noticias Telemundo Investiga tried to contact him by phone, email and text message, without a response.

"How much did you pay for your diploma? Did you have sex with anyone to be on Amazon?"

As the weeks passed, Cuervo explains that the nightmare was increasing at the same rate as his boss's discriminatory comments: "Fuck Latinos," or "How much did you pay for your diploma? Did you have sex with someone?" To be here?".

It began to affect him psychologically.

She says that her former boss attacked her daily: "He told me that he did not understand what I was doing there in that warehouse as a woman, as a Colombian, as a Latina, as a professional, it was a hostile environment."

"He told me that he did not understand what I was doing there in that warehouse as a woman, as a Colombian, as a Latina"

DIANA CUERVO, FORMER AMAZON EMPLOYEE

Cuervo's job was to oversee the small trucks that make the final deliveries of packages to customers.

She had to make sure to have the load prepared so that all the merchandise arrived on time and without errors, but sometimes small accidents or injuries slowed down the productivity of the warehouse.

“When I, as a supervisor, was worried because an employee's knee was hurting, and I told her not to work like that, my boss told me 'you don't have to be nice to people'”.

An Amazon employee dressed in a Confederate flag at an Illinois plant.Noticias Telemundo Investiga

Amazon employs more than 1.6 million workers, of which 23.6%, that is, 377,000, are Latinos, who mostly work in warehouses and in ground transportation.

Cuervo believes that it is more important for Amazon to deliver the more than 10 million packages that arrive at American homes every day than to protect the health of its employees and, in his experience, when the floor workers are African-American or Latino, the white supervisors they underestimate them.

Amazon prides itself on being a multi-ethnic employer where employees from widely diverse backgrounds are found.

He has launched campaigns such as

'Latinos en Amazon'

, where Hispanicity is celebrated within the company.

Raven thinks that's not enough.

Part of the "Latinos on Amazon" campaignAmazon

“It is very easy to talk about diversity and inclusion but it is very difficult to apply it, it is very easy to do diversity marketing and give diversity speeches, but not to apply it,” he says.

In the warehouse where Cuervo worked there were nine supervisors and she was the only woman and Latina.

"It's that with you we already filled that diversity box,"

she says that her former boss told her.

Tired of the bad comments and injustices, Cuervo went to the company's human resources office to complain about Stoia's behavior.

According to her account, in those days there was a snow storm in that suburb of Seattle, and she was the only supervisor who went to the warehouse to work.

Cuervo reports that a situation arose in which she had to mediate to load some trucks with merchandise, a job that was not her job, but she received instructions by phone from the supervisor in charge of those operations.

She says that the next day, her former boss told her: "You finally did something bad."

Diana Cuervo, former Amazon employee.Noticias Telemundo Investiga

After a few days, according to her account, Cuervo was fired for carrying out actions that were outside her responsibilities.

Claims for discrimination and racism were left in the air.

She tried to negotiate for a change of warehouse but the company did not allow it.

She thinks her departure from Amazon was due to her complaining about her former boss.

“They were very clear with me, they did not work for me, they worked for Amazon, it is a system of discrimination, it is a hostile site, it is a system in which the one who speaks, leaves,” says Cuervo.

He found support from the New York law firm Wigdor Law LLC and

sued Amazon for racial discrimination

.

In September of this year, Amazon responded to the lawsuit with a motion to dismiss the case, denying the former employee's allegations.

"Amazon denies that Stoia or any other employee made those comments," the motion reads.

The case is still ongoing in Seattle federal court.

Amazon's public relations office declined to comment further on this lawsuit.

Cuervo says that once Amazon fired her, it asked her back for the $20,000 it had given her as an incentive to move to Washington state.

In addition, he says she was out of work for nearly a year because other employers penalize former Amazon employees who leave the company over a dispute.

Graffiti in the restroom of an Amazon plant in Joliet, IL.Noticias Telemundo Investiga

"Amazon is not heaven"

“There is a stigma in society when you get fired from Amazon because they think Amazon is heaven, but it's not like that, it's a hostile place, where disrespectful treatment is allowed, it's a discriminatory workplace, and what makes me It happened to me, it happens to many people who remain silent so as not to lose their job”, says Diana.

Noticias Telemundo Investiga found another six cases in different states of the country where Amazon has lawsuits for racial discrimination.

One of these occurred in Joliet, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, where

25 employees sued Amazon

before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for allowing an environment of racial discrimination in its warehouses.

This federal agency is the first step for a lawsuit to reach a federal court.

After reviewing the evidence and considering that there are valid arguments to sue a company, the complaint goes to a judge who will decide if the company acted incorrectly and should compensate the employees.

The lawsuit claims that in May 2022, messages such as " N*** Gonna Die

" and

“F*** these N***” (Blacks are going to die)

appeared in the bathrooms of the Joliet warehouse

.

For the next two days, African American and Latino employees did not want to come to work because they felt threatened.

In a text message, Amazon told them there was no danger.

Graffiti that appeared in the restrooms of an Amazon plant in Joliet, IL.Noticias Telemundo Investiga

However, employees like Daniela Guzmán, assure that Amazon never fully investigated the case.

In her story, Guzmán, of Mexican origin, says that they never knew who wrote those messages.

She says the only measure Amazon took was to post a security guard for a few days at the entrance to the warehouse.

“When we go to work there are no metal detectors;

Anyone can enter the hold with a weapon.

But at the exit they do put these detectors so that employees do not steal merchandise, ”says Guzman, who is part of the lawsuit.

They are suffering emotional distress and are terrified."

TAMARA HOLDER, ATTORNEY 

The lawyer who took the case, Tamara Holder, maintains that the employees she represents "have been harmed by working in a racist and hostile work environment, are suffering emotional distress and are terrified."

The lawsuit includes a

photo of a white worker dressed in Confederate flags

, considered a racist symbol in the United States.

It is also claimed that Amazon fired the employee who began to convince the other employees to file the lawsuit.

In an email, Barbara Agrait, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the company "works hard to protect our employees from any form of discrimination and provide them with a safe environment. Hate and racism have no place in our society and are not tolerated." in our workplaces."

María Alfaro has worked for more than 20 years in the defense of workers' rights at the national level.

She is currently with the

Warehouse Workers for Justice

organization , which focuses on legal education and support for workers in various warehouses in the Chicago suburbs.

María Alfaro, from the organization Warehouse Workers for Justice.Noticias Telemundo

In his visits to Amazon headquarters, he says he has seen that discrimination against Hispanics can also be seen in terms of the distribution of the workload.

“They put them to work the hardest things because they know that Latinos know how to work, they come to this country to work and they are not going to say no,” Alfaro maintains.

Alfaro believes that the common denominator of Hispanic workers is that they remain silent in the face of injustices for fear of losing their jobs, are unaware of their labor rights, and are unaware of their immense value to the United States economy.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2022-12-08

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