Amazon workers are protesting the retail giant’s decision to end the unlimited unpaid-time-off program it has provided during the coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n
The online retail giant announced Friday that starting May 1st, workers\u00a0not directly affected by COVID-19 whose work requires physical presence\u00a0\u2014 primarily warehouse workers\u00a0\u2014 will either have to come to work or request a leave of absence.<\/p>\n
The company also announced it would be extending $2-per-hour hazard pay through May 16.<\/p>\n
Difficult choice:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Workers say the\u00a0possibility of losing benefits will force them to choose between\u00a0protecting their and their family’s health and potentially losing their jobs.<\/p>\n “I’m one of the people that is very anxious about this reduction of unlimited unpaid time off,”\u00a0Rachel Belz, a worker at an Amazon fulfillment center in New Jersey, said on a call with reporters Monday.<\/p>\n Belz has been staying home since late March out of fear of spreading the disease to high risk individuals she lives with or her son.<\/p>\n “Because what that means is you basically have to choose between your job and getting your family sick,” she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Amazon workers are protesting the retail...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24102,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24101\/revisions\/24102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}