FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Amazon says it may suspend distribution in France after court order

Amazon says it may suspend distribution in France after court order

PARIS - Amazon on Wednesday threatened to temporarily close its distribution centers in France, a day after a French court ordered a ban on nonessential sales during the coronavirus pandemic and upbraided the e-commerce giant for providing insufficient protections for its workers.


The court, a tribunal in Nanterre outside Paris, ordered Amazon to limit sales and deliveries to items such as food and medical supplies while the company submitted to a risk assessment and upgraded its health and safety procedures for employees. The decision gave Amazon 24 hours to comply, with a daily fine of 1 million euros ($1.2 million) until it did.

Amazon vowed to appeal, disputing the court's claim that the company "has obviously disregarded its obligation to ensure the safety and health of its employees," according to a copy of the ruling seen by the AFP.

The decision, Amazon's French branch said in a statement to The Washington Post, "leaves us perplexed given the concrete evidence that has been provided on the security measures put in place to protect our employees." (Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos also owns The Post.)

The statement said that those employee protection measures "include temperature controls, the distribution of masks and enhanced social distancing" and had been previously approved by "health and safety experts" who had visited Amazon sites.

But several Amazon employees in France have tested positive for the coronavirus, and Amazon's practices have drawn the repeated criticism of France's labor minister, Muriel Penicaud, who said last month that the company's protection measures were "insufficient." In early April, Penicaud said the conditions at four specific Amazon sites in France failed to meet social distancing guidelines and that she had given them three days to comply.

"Protecting its employees is not negotiable in a company, it's an obligation," she said.

President Emmanuel Macron ordered the temporary closure, starting March 17, of all businesses in France, save for essential services such as food stores and pharmacies. Online deliveries, however, were allowed to continue, which meant that Amazon could continue selling goods beyond basic essentials.

After Macron's order took effect, union representatives complained that Amazon was not obeying the spirit of France's lockdown and that employees were risking their safety to ship consumers items they did not immediately need.

"We feel really unsafe, and I've got colleagues who are coming to work feeling fearful," Richard Vives, a representative of France's CAT union, told the Reuters news agency in March during a protest outside an Amazon warehouse in the town of Saran in central France.

In the United States, where the security of Amazon employees has also become a concern, the company has vowed to create its own testing lab to screen employees for the coronavirus. But similar employee testing would not be put in place in France, Amazon spokesman Céline Mandouze told The Washington Post.

"Currently, we continue to operate in the country and do our best to maintain the level of service expected by our customers in France," Amazon's statement read. "But without the possibility of operating our distribution centers in France, we would be forced to restrict a service that has become essential for the millions of people across the country who wish to have access to the products they need at home during this crisis."

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