By Sebastian Herrera 

Amazon.com Inc. has filled 80,000 jobs in the span of a few weeks, part of a hiring spree to add 100,000 workers to meet soaring demand in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The tech giant also announced a raft of worker protections, including plans to check employee temperatures at its facilities in the U.S. and Europe and at Whole Foods Market locations by early next week. The company is checking the temperature of 100,000 employees a day and plans to provide masks to all facilities by next week, according to Dave Clark, Amazon's senior vice president of world-wide operations. Any employee found to have a temperature above 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit will be asked to go home and not return until after having gone three days without a fever, Mr. Clark said.

The announcement comes after Amazon warehouse workers and other hourly employees have called on Amazon to do more to protect them. Employees in at least 15 warehouses in the U.S. have tested positive for Covid-19 or entered quarantine due to symptoms, the company said this week. That list has grown almost daily in recent weeks.

Amazon employs more than 500,000 people in the U.S., making it the second largest private employer. Walmart Inc., the nation's largest private employer with about 1.5 million workers, recently announced similar plans to provide masks to employees and take temperatures at the start of each shift. The company has hired 65,000 workers since March 19 and said it would add 150,000 to manage the shopping surge sparked by the outbreak.

About 15 employees at a warehouse in Staten Island, N.Y., walked out of work on Monday, according to Amazon. The walkout was followed by similar actions at facilities in Chicago and the Detroit area, as well as a "sick out" on Tuesday by workers at Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon.

As the virus spread across the U.S., Amazon has faced overwhelming demand and mass employee absences at its warehouses, The Wall Street Journal reported this week. Some workers have said Amazon hasn't provided enough cleaning supplies at facilities or properly enforced social-distancing efforts. Organized employees have called on Amazon to shut down any warehouse where at least one confirmed case of Covid-19 is found.

Amazon has implemented several measures to keep employees safe at warehouses, including separating tables and chairs inside break rooms and eliminating meetings between workers and managers that would typically begin before each shift, according to workers. The company said warehouses with confirmed cases can be temporarily closed for deep cleaning and reopen once that process is over.

Amazon has secured an additional 450,000 canisters of disinfectant wipes and more than 50,000 hand sanitizers for its warehouse staff, according to a memo reviewed by the Journal.

Mr. Clark of Amazon said in a blog post that the company is in the process of distributing masks to workers, which will be available as soon as Thursday in some locations, with all facilities having masks by early next week. The company will donate any N95 masks it receives to health-care workers or will sell them at cost, he said.

Amazon has rolled out several new policies in recent weeks. The company said employees who show symptoms or are diagnosed with Covid-19, or are in quarantine, are eligible for up to two weeks of paid sick leave. The company has also raised hourly pay for employees in the U.S. and Canada by $2 through the end of April and allowed employees to take an unlimited amount of unpaid time off through the end of the month. Mr. Clark said Amazon expects to "go well beyond our initial $350 million investment in additional pay, and we will do so happily."

The company is planning to conduct daily audits of the new health and safety measures, using cameras in its facilities and machine learning to monitor social distancing.

"With over 1,000 sites around the world, and so many measures and precautions rapidly rolled out over the past several weeks, there may be instances where we don't get it perfect, but I can assure you that's just what they'll be -- exceptions," he said in the post.

Write to Sebastian Herrera at Sebastian.Herrera@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 02, 2020 12:24 ET (16:24 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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