"Ex-Amazon employee sues for wrongful termination, claims coronavirus whistleblowing led to firing," 5 May 2020

A former Amazon employee is suing the company, claiming she was wrongfully terminated after taking time off to recover from COVID-19-like symptoms and sounding the alarm about safety concerns inside the warehouse where she worked.

It appears to be the first lawsuit brought by an Amazon employee over the company’s response to the coronavirus crisis, a subject of much criticism and activism over the past few weeks.

Enesha Yurchak filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Circuit Court of the State of Oregon. She worked as an on-site emergency medical technician at a warehouse in Salem, Ore., according to the complaint. It names Amazon and her former supervisors as defendants and seeks damages.

Yurchak took time off in early March when she began experiencing symptoms consistent with COVID-19, according to the complaint. Upon her return in mid-April, Yurchak says she witnessed violations of safety policies designed to stem the spread of the virus. She and several coworkers were asked, at that time, to wash other employees’ personal protective equipment...

The company did not respond to GeekWire’s request to comment on the lawsuit. News of the suit was reported earlier today by The Oregonian.

“Amazon acted with malice, showed a reckless and outrageous indifference to a highly unreasonable risk of harm, and acted with a conscious indifference to the health, safety and welfare of others,” the complaint says.