User experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa say they lost their jobs after circulating a petition about Covid-19 risks

Amazon has fired two employees after they publicly denounced the company’s treatment of warehouse workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

The user experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa said on Tuesday they had been fired after internally circulating a petition about health risks for Amazon warehouse workers during the Covid-19 crisis. Costa had worked at the company for more than 15 years and Cunningham had been an employee for more than five.

“I don’t regret standing up with my co-workers,” Costa said in a statement. “This is about human lives, and the future of humanity. In this crisis, we must stand up for what we believe in, have hope, and demand from our corporations and employers a basic decency that’s been lacking in this crisis.”

An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the two employees were fired for “repeatedly violating internal policies”, which prohibit employees from commenting publicly on its business without corporate justification and approval from executives.

“We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies,” the spokeswoman said.

Costa and Cunningham had received repeated warnings for speaking out on the company’s climate record during their time organizing with Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group that made public calls for the company to do more to fight the climate crisis.

In April 2019, the group coordinated an open letter signed by more than 8,700 employees criticizing the company’s failure to act on climate change. In September, the group organized a walkout by more than 3,000 corporate workers.

Amazon Employees For Climate Justice said in addition to terminating Costa and Cunningham, the company had also censored invitations for a virtual event that would have allowed warehouse workers to share their concerns over working during the pandemic with white-collar employees. The company deleted all invitations and emails regarding the event, a spokesman for the group said, even after thousands of employees had RSVPed. Amazon declined to comment regarding the event.

“Why is Amazon so scared of workers talking with each other?” Costa said. “No company should punish their employees for showing concern for one another, especially during a pandemic.”

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Cunningham said the group’s efforts to address climate change and workers’ rights were intertwined.

“We are in the middle of both the climate crisis and a global pandemic. This is the time to deeply care about one another,” Cunningham said. “We have to do all that we can to support workers on the frontlines, now more than ever.”

In March, Amazon fired the warehouse employee Chris Smalls after he spoke out against unsafe conditions in a Staten Island, New York, warehouse. Amazon claims Smalls was fired for violating social distancing practices.

This week, the company fired Bashir Mohamed, a warehouse worker in Minnesota who was also speaking out against unsafe conditions surrounding Covid-19. Amazon confirmed Mohamed’s termination, saying he was fired for “violating social distancing guidelines”.

“We respect the rights of employees to protest and recognize their legal right to do so; however, these rights do not provide blanket immunity against bad actions, particularly those that endanger the health, wellbeing or safety of their colleagues,” Kristen Kish, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said about Mohamed’s firing.