A crowd-sourced monitoring device launched on Wednesday will permit Amazon employees to report and monitor the rising variety of coronavirus circumstances of their amenities, as the corporate refuses to publicly launch complete figures.

Labor group United for Respect has released the brand new system, which can depend on experiences from workers to maintain a extra correct depend of what number of employees have been identified with Covid-19.

The device comes as Amazon confirmed the death of a employee in one in all its New York warehouses from coronavirus this week and workers demand paid sick go away and protest lack of safety. The corporate nonetheless refuses to share publicly – or with its workers – the full variety of sick employees at every facility.

Staff say Amazon sends them an alert when somebody of their office is identified with coronavirus, however doesn’t embody the full numbers.

Not realizing the size of the pandemic has contributed to rising nervousness within the office the place workers have change into frontline employees, stated Courtenay Brown, an Amazon warehouse employee in New Jersey and member of United for Respect stated.

“It’s full and utter chaos and panic,” she stated. “Lots of people are scared. We aren’t simply getting sick anymore – we’re dying.”

Some workers have beforehand tried to make the depend themselves. Jana Jumpp, an Amazon worker in Indiana, has been tracking cases and logged not less than 500 circumstances in 125 Amazon amenities as of late April.

The worker who died on Tuesday labored at a warehouse in New York the place employees staged a walkout protesting poor working conditions and lack of safety from coronavirus. Amazon later fired the worker accountable for the walkout.

Final week, employees participated in a nationwide sick-out to protest in opposition to poor working situations and insufficient security protections, claiming the corporate has failed to supply sufficient face masks for employees, didn’t implement common temperature checks it promised at warehouses, and has refused to present employees paid sick go away.

The tracker will act as a central repository for employees to doc experiences of optimistic circumstances as they come up and as a spot to submit media experiences of coronavirus circumstances. Staff can add new experiences from their facility together with texts, voicemails, and different communication from administration.

The group previously launched a companion map to trace the unfold of Covid-19 at Walmart. Within the first 24 hours, it generated experiences in additional than 100 amenities, and now consists of greater than 400 worker-generated experiences of Covid-19 circumstances.

“Amazon ought to have already performed this, however since they gained’t do it, employees will do it,” Brown stated.

A spokesman for Amazon informed the Guardian the corporate “expects to take a position” roughly $4bn from April to June on Covid-related initiatives to “get merchandise to clients and maintain workers secure”.

“Like most world corporations, we’ve had workers affected by this, and we’re doing all that we are able to to guard our workers and take the correct precautions as said in WHO tips,” he stated. “Our high concern is making certain the well being and security of our workers.”

Amazon made more than $33m per hour within the first three months of the 12 months, in accordance its first quarter earnings report. The chief government officer, Jeff Bezos, who was already the richest man on this planet, has personally seen his fortune swell by $13bn this month to $145bn.