A former Amazon warehouse employee has sued the internet retail colossus, arguing he was fired in retribution for seeking bereavement leave after both of his parents passed away less than a week apart.
In the suit filed on Tuesday in Kern County, California, 53-year-old Scott Brock accused Amazon of wrongfully firing him from his position at the Bakersfield fulfilment centre in early February.
Scott Brock told a newspaper outlet in a phone interview that he was stunned to be fired after he says Amazon rejected his request for bereavement leave when his parents, both in their 80s, died six days apart from natural causes.
Scott Brock said he was just shocked, and that they were more concerned about numbers than they were about people and that it wasn’t right.
Scott Brock’s attorney, Ronald L Zambrano of West Coast Trial Lawyers, concurred, telling the newspaper outlet that it was just heartless.
Amazon spokesperson Alisa Carroll denied the allegations in a statement to the newspaper outlet, saying that while they were very sorry for the loss of Mr Brock’s parents, it was unrelated to why he was no longer working at Amazon and that Mr Brock’s employment was terminated after an investigation found that he threatened a coworker and violated Amazon’s policies against workplace violence.
Mr Brock’s attorney Zambrano disputed that account, saying the workplace issue in question was well before Mr Brock’s parents died, accusing Amazon of using it as a pretext in his firing.
Zambrano said that Amazon, based on their own behaviour, appears to care more about efficiency and the bottom line versus reacting to real life and that somebody saying that their parents were dying should be that they should have let Mr Brock take some time off, and then let him back to work, but instead, they’ve punished him for it.
Mr Brock said his parents had both suffered from congestive heart failure and other medical problems, and that the couple seemed to go into a downward health spiral together in their final days, after more than six decades of happy marriage.
His father, 87-year-old Harold, was a Navy veteran who served as a mechanical specialist in aircraft carriers in the Korean War, before working as a truck driver for many years to support his wife and five children, who grew up in Bakersfield.
According to an obituary, he officially retired in 1989, but continued driving for independent trucking companies until he was 80, and then kept working as a crossing guard.
But talk to some people who have worked for or still work for Amazon and they’ll probably tell you the same thing – that Amazon doesn’t consider you as a person, and that as soon as Amazon can replace humans with robots, they will!
Awful conduct from an employer, but then I guess that’s why they’re so rich, but I do feel for this poor man, he must have had a week from hell – what doesn’t Amazon have bereavement leave? Talk about kicking a man when he’s down, it’s just not right.
Amazon evidently wanted to get rid of him and this was their excuse, and I would guess that working at a fulfilment centre must be the worst nightmare. I would imagine the definition of hell on earth where you’re dehumanised to the point of being a slave.
This man should find a better job because clearly, Amazon doesn’t value their workers.
Then you have the man that died working at Amazon who had a heart attack and wasn’t discovered for twenty minutes and then given treatment before the ambulance arrived and then staff were told to go back to work, they didn’t even have enough time to decompress, and that’s because Amazon expects their employees to work like robots.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 