Amazonians United says Black and Latino workers have been harassed while taking bathroom breaks and that managers have made derogatory and racist comments. The group accuses management of wrongfully firing Rakyle Johnson for sabotaging equipment, despite no proof on video and testimony to the contrary from nearby coworkers.
Amazon


Chicago-area retail stores hit record-high sales, but that's not without impacting online buying as Amazon looks to sublet warehouse space. Meanwhile, legal limbo over nearly 200 pot shop licenses could soon come to an end.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Tuesday sent a “Hazard Alert Letter” to the Seattle-based e-commerce giant on Tuesday following the agency’s investigation into the deadly collapse of a company warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois in December. Six people died and another was critically injured in the tornado strike.

The Amazon facility in downstate Edwardsville where six workers died after the building was struck by a tornado appears to have had major structural flaws, according to a lawsuit and a government engineer’s report released by the plaintiff’s attorney.

Warehouse workers cast 2,654 votes in favor of a union, giving the fledgling Amazon Labor Union enough support to pull off a victory. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which is overseeing the process, 2,131 workers rejected the union bid.

In Chicago, a group of workers called Amazonians United Chicagoland says it’s seen success from its organizing efforts.

OSHA inspectors, who have been at the site since Saturday, will look into whether workplace safety rules were followed and will have six months to complete the investigation, said spokesperson Scott Allen.

The company has not said how many people were in the building not far from St. Louis when the tornado hit at 8:35 p.m. Friday — part of a swarm of twisters across the Midwest and the South that leveled entire communities. Authorities said they didn’t have a full count of employees because it was during a shift change and there were several part-time employees.

Rescuers in an increasingly bleak search picked through the tornado-splintered ruins of homes and businesses Sunday, including a candle factory that was bustling with night-shift employees when it was flattened, as Kentucky’s governor warned the state’s death toll from the outbreak could top 100.

Tornadoes and severe weather caused catastrophic damage across multiple states late Friday, killing at least six people overnight as a storm system tore through a candle factory in Kentucky, an Amazon facility in Illinois and a nursing home in Arkansas. The Kentucky governor said he feared dozens more could be dead.

A major outage in Amazon’s cloud computing network Tuesday severely disrupted services at a wide range of U.S. companies for hours, raising questions about the vulnerability of the internet and its concentration in the hands of a few firms.

Amazon’s cloud computing technology experienced major technical difficulties Tuesday, and brought half the world to a halt — or at least it felt that way to clients and consumers reliant on applications or services such as Alexa, Amazon Prime Video, Ring and Canvas.

The e-commerce giant recently began installing lockers inside Chicago parks, and says the lockers are a “secure and convenient” option. But that so-called convenience has proven controversial.

Amazon Prime members who shop at Whole Foods in select cities, including Chicago, will soon see a new charge on their bills. Crain’s Chicago Business editor Ann Dwyer takes us behind the headline of that story and more.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO on Monday, handing over the reins as the company navigates the challenges of a world fighting to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic.

Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the U.S. behind Walmart, is making the change as states legalize cannabis or introduce laws banning employers from testing for it.