In a company web log post today , Amazon announced it ’s create a financial safety net for its contingent doer , making it one of the last major technical school companies to do so amid the ongoingcoronavirus pandemic .
Last week , Twitter , Microsoft , Facebook , and Google madevaryingpledgesto continue bear hourly vender — like cafeteria faculty or bus driver — their regular wages , despite potential cut to their schedules . In tandem , gig economy troupe , which command massive workforces for whom they do not bring home the bacon health policy , have been seethe outextremely limit versionsof healthcare crediting or paid brainsick leave , partially in response topressurefrom Congress .
Amazon is both a major tech companionship and a unfathomed substance abuser of contract labor , and for some reason , despite hebdomad of restricting change of location and other operational changes made for the guard of its full - time hands , is only now investing in the medical needs of these actor .
Photo: Getty
“ We are set up the Amazon Relief Fund with a $ 25 million initial contribution focused on endorse our independent delivery armed service partners and their driver , Amazon Flex participants , and seasonal employees under fiscal distress during this ambitious time , ” the companywrotetoday . “ We will be offer all of these groups the power to apply for grants approximately equal to up to two - weeks of earnings if name with COVID-19 or place into quarantine by the politics or Amazon . ”
Full - time and part - time employee are also eligible for up to two weeks of pay if diagnose with COVID-19 , the disease due to the refreshing coronavirus , or quarantined , though without the dogfight of a grant program .
Effectively , there ’s no preventative component to Amazon ’s compensation programme , though the company may believe that side of the equivalence is already balanced by a newly relaxed attending policy . Nor is there any reading of how many contingent worker $ 25 million is potential to support and for how long — a disturbing prospect considering some expert estimates have placed the final vulnerability in the U.S. at around150 million people .
Confirmed casing in the U.S. are believed to have topped 1,100 today , with many cities initiate bans on large public gathering to limit the spread of COVID-19 , a virus with a fatality rate many times higher than typical flu . Around125,000cases and climbing have been reported globally .
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