Amazon has reversed course on one of its long-standing policies, allowing warehouse employees to keep their cell phones after a deadly tornado.
Amazon had a long history of banning employees from having their cell phones when working in the company’s warehouses. That ban was suspended during the pandemic, but the company said it planned on reinstating it in January 2022. Deadly tornadoes in December, however, once again made the policy a focus of attention. Six workers were killed when a tornado struck the company’s Edwardsville, Illinois warehouse. Critics have said cell phones are an important tool for worker safety, giving them the ability to receive severe weather alerts, not to mention providing a way for family members to reach them in the event of an emergency.
According to an internal memo seen by Motherboard, Amazon has finally relented and made the policy permanent, after initially saying it would keep it in place “until further notice” following the tornado.
“We recognize the desire for employees to keep their mobile phones with them inside facilities, and the last two years have demonstrated that we can safely do so,” the notification read. “Therefore, we are making the temporary phone policy permanent worldwide, in all of our Operations facilities.”
As Gizmodo points out, employees were already comparing Amazon’s policies to those of other companies with better safety records.
“Amazon claims it’s a safety issue, but taking our phones means our families can’t reach us,” Amazonians United wrote in a petition. “Other companies like UPS do allow workers to keep their phones and even to have one headphone in as they work and they still have better safety records than Amazon. Taking our phones away isn’t about safety; it’s about controlling us. We demand that Amazon, like other companies, allow us to keep our phones on us.”
Although Amazon has relented on this issue, it remains to be seen if the company will relent on other issues that are driving multiple unionization efforts on the part of its employees.