It was fall of last year when Jake, who asked that I not use his last name, first started working at an Amazon fulfillment center in Queens. It was a second job—he took it on because he needed some extra income—and he’d been picking up steady shifts since then. But on Tuesday, after developing a cough, Jake stopped going into work. The city was in the middle of a pandemic, and, even though he knew he wouldn’t get paid, it just didn’t seem worth the risk of getting other people sick.

In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, Amazon has offered its workers unlimited unpaid time off through the end of March—meaning that for the next two weeks, they won’t fire people for missing shifts but also won’t pay them if they’re self-isolating as a safety measure, either. (It has also launched what it’s calling an emergency relief fund that allows workers to apply for hardship grants.) For those seeking paid time off, the current company policy requires a quarantine or coronavirus diagnosis, which requires a positive test. That’s an incredibly high bar, as most people in the city right now—and across the country—aren’t able to get one.

“It was stupid, but I walked to the hospital,” Jake told The New Republic during a phone interview on Wednesday afternoon. “They told me I can’t get tested because I’m young and they don’t have enough tests.” Still, the doctor told him to stay home from work out of an abundance of caution. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to be paid or not,” he said. “But I know I’m not going to be able to get tested.”

Jake then predicted, presciently, that the virus had likely already reached the warehouse, since it is staffed by “tons and tons of working-class people who ride the subway all the time, who have not been able to work from home.” Four hours after our phone call, he was proven right: The Atlantic reported that a co-worker had tested positive.



According to Jake, who is a member of a workers’ organizing group called Amazonians United, the news of the positive test first started to spread around 6:30 p.m., when workers on the day shift texted A.U. members with the news that they were being sent home. According to Jake, management told the workers that they were only shutting down temporarily in order to disinfect the warehouse before the night shift. A.U. then sent a mass text to all of the facility workers advising them against showing up for that shift and told workers already at the facility to go home as a safety precaution. It was just 20 minutes before the shift was meant to start that Amazon management finally conceded and canceled the shift, Jake said. (In an email to The Atlantic, Amazon said it notified all associates about the positive test, and that “workers were not expected to come in for their night shift.”)