Pre-Covid, Amazon banned the keeping of a cell phone on your person and lockers were utilized, but for the pandemic workers are allowed to have their devices for Covid-related emergencies. At the end of 2021 Amazon came under heavy scrutiny due to the well-established belief, on the side of regular, entry-level workers, that workers' best chance at personal safety ultimately lies in their own hands and in access to critical information originating outside of the warehouse, specifically after the tragic Edwardsville, Illinois warehouse collapse. Now that the media/news has moved on from covering Amazon's phone ban, the company is once again rolling back a policy which essentially demands that if someone shoots up the warehouse (it's happened before) we, as living, breathing human beings, do not fundamentally deserve the chance for sharing last words to our loved ones or calling emergency services for help. If a tornado or winter storm is imminent, we will not have personal access to immediate life-or-death weather alerts. If a coworker has a medical emergency in an isolated area, precious seconds that could be spent dialing for an ambulance will have to be spent running to find someone for help, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of parents, caretakers, and others who would prefer and deserve to know firsthand and immediately if their spouse got into a car accident or their father had a heart attack. It is not at all surprising that Amazon waited until the articles and news stories lambasting the company for this outdated and dehumanizing policy died down to do this again.
Theft of high-value items can be a problem. Safety can be a problem as common sense isn't always common. However, the rule of forcing employees' personal devices into insecure lockers and demanding that in order to work there, they must be cut off from every valuable and potentially life-saving connection to the outside world, will never be the answer to these problems. The company claims it's for our safety, but in a massive warehouse with no legitimate security on the way in, and no ability to know who has a gun or not, consenting to being unable to contact 911 for the duration of our shifts (except on breaks) just so we can earn a living for ourselves, and our families, is clearly and inherently unsafe.
Am I the only one who feels this way?