If there were do-overs enabling business principals to peel back time, the top-tier management team at commercial titan Amazon would undoubtedly avail itself of one.
In fact, it might just favor erasing May from the 2021 calendar altogether.
Candidly, the first month of spring spelled a rocky road for one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies.
The bottom line: Litigation-linked news and reports underscored company misconduct across a broad sphere of alleged wrongdoing. Moreover, lawsuits highlighting illegal conduct targeting select employees were filed in federal courts from coast to coast.
One key Amazon lawsuit: racial, gender bias spotlighted
Count them. Five federal claims were filed last week by female Amazon employees of varied ages alleging a host of unlawful conduct aimed their way by managers. An in-depth Reuters report cites allegations of “favoring men over women in career growth, allowing supervisors to denigrate them, and retaliating after they complained.”
And this is certainly notable. Reuters highlights that, “Two plaintiffs are Black, one is Latina, one is Asian-American and the other is white.”
And tandem litigation: no-pay allegation re military leave
Amazon reportedly pays employees while they are out on bereavement leave and engaged in jury duty.
A federal lawsuit filed last week states that pay is not similarly forthcoming for workers who take short-term military leave. That nonpayment violates a mandate set forth in the federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994.
It’s not like the company isn’t aware of workers’ discontent and hasn’t heard adverse labor-linked claims before. As Reuters notes, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is on record candidly admitting that the company “needs to take care of employees better.”