Amazon, Instacart among companies who plan to strike over facility safety concerns amid the coronavirus outbreak

Amazon and Instacart workers prepare to go on strike as management is allegedly unresponsive to employees safety concerns. Yahoo Finance’s Akiko Fujita joins the On The Move panel to break it all down.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: We want to turn now to something that's going on in New York, but also around the country. Workers are not necessarily happy with how their employers have been handling coronavirus safety. Among them, some workers for Amazon on Staten Island, who are poised to strike. Akiko Fujita has been covering that story for us. Akiko, what's the latest on that situation?

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, Julie, so we're tracking two separate strikes today. One is at an Amazon facility that you pointed to. Nearly 100 workers is what we're hearing out of a facility of 4,500. So not a significant number, but essentially, what they're demanding right now is for Amazon to shut down the facility and sanitize it completely, and then offer paid leave while the facility is closed down.

And the reason they're concerned is because an employee there tested positive for coronavirus last week. Now, at the time, Amazon had said that that person had been quarantined. They were going along with all the safety guidelines. But what we're hearing from these workers is that they simply don't feel comfortable showing up to work without the proper sanitation steps being taken.

Now, separately, there is a national walkout that is happening among Instacart workers today. And that's pretty significant when you consider that the company just announced last week that they would be ramping up their hiring, an additional 300,000 employees they were looking to hire as a result of the increased demand.

And what we're hearing from those workers is, once again, that they don't believe they're being protected by Instacart. They're being forced to go into these grocery stores where they don't believe that there are safety measures being taken place.

I should point out that I did get a statement from Instacart saying that they do hear these workers. They have now said they're going to be supplying each one of these workers with hand sanitizers that are now being developed by a third party they have partnered with. They've also said they're going to have 14 days paid leave for anybody who tests positive for the coronavirus.

But I can tell you, Julie, having spoken to some of these workers, they believe they have leverage right now because of the demand. And they simply don't believe the company is acting quickly enough.

- Hey, Akiko, it's Dan. I just wanted to see-- as far as the spectrum of gig workers go, obviously Amazon, separate from that, but you have Instacart. We were talking about Uber and Lyft prior to that, delivery drivers. Have you seen this as an opportunity for them to come together and put their foot down and say, look, this is a time of crisis, this shows the cracks in the system of the gig economy, we need to be satisfied as full-time workers? Do you think that that's something that's going to follow this?

AKIKO FUJITA: There's no question about that. They do feel empowered by the demand that they are having to take on right now. A lot of petitions popping up online separately. We're also seeing a petition for Whole Foods employees, a potential sick-out being planned tomorrow. You talked about the gig workers. I just had a chance to speak to a number of DoorDash workers or delivery workers over the weekend, who said they also don't feel comfortable.

And what's interesting, Dan, is when you start to see the movement. A lot of these Uber and Lyft drivers who lost a lot of the business once the stay-at-home orders went into place are now shifting over to food delivery. They're going to DoorDash. They're going to Postmates. They're not able to make the kind of money they did with Uber or Lyft.

But they're also-- one employee said, she's being asked to deliver these products. She's going to restaurants where it's crowded with delivery workers. And she doesn't believe the guidelines that are being given by companies like DoorDash are sufficient enough.

So I think it's an interesting dynamic that's playing out right now. On the one hand, these companies saying we're going to ramp up production to really help out all those people who are at home. And on the other hand, employees who are tasked with those deliveries saying, well, you've got to look out for us first, because we don't feel like we're being protected when we are being told we're essential workers right now now.

JULIE HYMAN: Akiko, thank you for bringing us that. And I imagine we will hear more from a wider swath of workers in the coming weeks. Appreciate it.