> Laurent Degousee, of the SUD-Commerce union that was behind the complaint, acknowledged that Amazon had "not stood idly by" amid the crisis but had taken a "slew of measures without any evaluation".
> He said that the taking of temperatures had sometimes caused queues and thus risked possible infection.
So Amazon had the choice of either;
a) taking the court ruling seriously and doubling down on efforts to ensure worker safety and working out what needs to be done to lift the suspension
or
b) raising a middle finger and threatening to suspend all deliveries, thereby adding fuel to the notion that Amazon doesn't take worker safety seriously and creating opposition in France that will now work on strategies for "what to do if Amazon pulls out of our market?"
> raising a middle finger and threatening to suspend all deliveries
I don’t see this. The court gave a short deadline for meeting an ambiguous target with respect to a complex international logistics network. Amazon’s choices are to sloppily comply or halt until they can properly do so. They’re choosing the latter.
That keeps warehouse workers safe. And it gives Amazon time to figure out how to only ship that which the court would consider essential. The only loser is the French consumer, and they (will eventually) have other options.
Almost all laws and legal orders have some ambiguity to them. Sloppy compliance is the correct choice both here and generally, because a) demonstrates to the court that you broadly agree and will respect the court's authority, and b) allows you to go about your business as much as possible.
Given Amazon's recent behaviors around worker protection, I expect their action here is chosen for maximum drama, an attempt to pressure the French government, and to warn other governments that they will disrupt the delivery of essential supplies if they don't get their way. So I agree with harryh; it's a middle finger.
It's been deeply disappointing to me. I've been on the fence with Amazon for a while about labor issues. But their behavior recently has crossed a line. I canceled my Prime membership yesterday. If they don't rapidly reform, it'll be the end of my 23 years as a customer.
> The court gave a short deadline for meeting an ambiguous target with respect to a complex international logistics network.
The court gave a short deadline because it should have been done a while ago already. Let's not pretend like it's a surprise.
The government asked to stop any non-vital activity a month ago.
Amazon, instead of interpreting this as: let's reduce our activity to just the part that qualifies as vital (vital for the country, not vital for Amazon margins), interpreted this as: since we ship some vital stuff, all of our activity is vital, and can proceed like business as usual.
This is just a usual greedy move where profit comes before health of the employees.
> The court gave a short deadline for meeting an ambiguous target
Everyone in the world is trying to meet an ambiguous target. You know what happened to all the small businesses in my neighborhood? They are closed until further notice.
Amazon employs an underclass (warehouse workers) that we all expect to risk their lives for our comfort. French court said: "non". Good for them.
According to the article, Amazon had a month and didn't get its act together, and this is the follow-up action by the court.
ambiguous target
Says Amazon. Amazon doesn't say what was ambiguous.
with respect to a complex international logistics network
You don't get to endanger people's lives just because you're a big company operating in multiple markets. Plus, Amazon isn't exactly hurting for money.
I think not only "French customer", I order stuff from amazon UK while living in Switzerland and often goods go through sorting/whatever facilities in France. Maybe it'll just get routed different way without much impact, not sure.
Well the article is consistent with the ones you posted. I don't see any other side of the story. It's rather a continuation of the same story.
“Our interpretation suggests that we may be forced to suspend the activity of our distribution centers in France,” Amazon said in a statement. “The court gave categories that are very general and create ambiguity that would be too hard to implement, this is a complex business to run,” a spokeswoman for Amazon told Bloomberg.
Amazon isn’t able to reduce its activity and must shut down completely “because of the terms and conditions of the court order, especially because of their ambiguity and the absence of definition,” the e-commerce giant said in an internal memo that was seen by Bloomberg. The company will suspend activity at its fulfillment centers for an “initial period” of five days starting on April 16, it said.
5 days, with 100% of their pay btw. That does not sound like a "threat" to me. Why frame it as such?
"Threat" is a one of the biggest weasel words I see used by the media to influence their readers. If the subject of the article is meant to be sympathetic, the media will instead use the word "warn" which is more neutral. If the subject is meant to be a villain, they'll use "threat" since it has a connotation of violence.
This headline could have easily been written as "Amazon states it may suspend French deliveries ..." but that doesn't portray Amazon as negatively as the author wanted. Amazon is meant to be the villain in this article.
To be fair, if the deadline is short and if it's indeed unclear which activity Amazon is allowed to do now, taking a moment to figure that out is not that bad of an idea.
The court's ask seems reasonable given the circumstances, but 24 hours to deal with a complex logistical problem is... kind of like management pulling deadlines out of their ass that no rational person thinks is actually possible.
If the deadline was, say, 1 week, then I'd agree that it seems like a fair demand.
>taking a moment to figure that out is not that bad of an idea.
This is a tax. The whole point is that they should've been doing this from the start. They've had 4 months of moments to figure out how to keep their workers safe, and the fact that they have union busting history makes this all worse.
My reading of this situation is that they were doing everthing they could to ensure worker safety while continuing to operate, got sued because their efforts weren’t perfect.
The courts ordered them to meet an unrealistic bar, so the only way to comply with the court order is to shut down for a week.
This is what the judge ordered. If the judge didn’t want to create artificial shortages during a crisis, they should have thought more carefully before deciding the case. Note that Amazon’s appealing the ruling, so hopefully the judge will be overruled.
Yes, I agree. I'm not an Amazon fan at all and disagree with most of the behaviour of this company, but in this case it seems to be the right thing to do. Stopping while figuring out how to adapt their business seems logical and the safest thing to do for its employees.
I think 5 days to design & implement changes encompassing an ambiguous set of requirements in such a truly massive systems isn't unreasonable, and isn't a "middle finger".
I do, however, think it serves as a signal to the French courts that rulings of this sort can have unintended consequences, and perhaps more care should be taken: 24 hours is not a reasonable deadline for such an undertaking. It seems strange the court did not enter into a dialogue about how long changes would take: It is an obvious issue that would need to be addressed. Had they done so, the court, rather than Amazon, could have decided what happens in the interim before a reduction to "essentials" could be implemented.
It seems like French government is going to pay for most of the workers salaries in both case: a plan that you may activate in France in case of "substential order decrease", which is caused by any outcome of the current situation as I understand it.
I don't really know the French legal system but I'm pretty intimately familiar with health and healthcare law in the US. While there's not a lot of information in the Bloomberg article, I'm fairly certain "doubling down on efforts to ensure worker safety" is not enough. (It's possible the court gave an actual list of steps that need to be taken in that regard? But if it did, that was not highlighted in the article.)
Bottom line, based on the little that was in the article, if coronavirus shows up in your facility despite your doubled down efforts you're still liable. A court of law is a court of law in the US. The liability would be with you. Again, maybe there was some more clear instruction given? But if not, there's a lot of rope there to hang yourself with. Best to just stop doing business in that jurisdiction. At least until you have a better idea what's going on.
Doesn't seem like a threat? More of a recognition of the necessary consequences of this particular order. If the court says to stop doing some things, and the wheels are too big to be changed while in flight, then Amazon should shut down for the time it takes to figure out how to comply. That's just obeying the court, right?
Obviously you shut down. I don't think any reasonable people have an issue with that. What I'd like to understand more is what are the steps sufficient with guaranteeing, (or, I guess, better protecting), health? I can't really make out what is not being done that needs to be done vs what is being done that shouldn't be done vs etc etc etc.
Of course it's a "threat". Amazon doesn't want to shut down in France, they just want not to be subject to this court order. France doesn't want Amazon to shut down in France, they just want them to honor this court order. The only reason you announce a policy that no one wants is as a negotiating tactic. "Honor my desires or else the outcome will be worse for both of us" is, logically, what "threat" means.
Now, no, Amazon can't possibly do what the order asks in 24 hours. But they certainly could make a good faith attempt.
I made this point yesterday, but I remain amazed at the extent to which Amazon let itself be painted the "bad guy" in all of this, simply by not being willing to negotiate with their workers on an equal basis. A world where Amazon had a healthy relationship with its unions isn't one where everyone comes at them with a knife during a crisis trying to protect their workers.
> But they certainly could make a good faith attempt.
In my understanding, court orders are not a polite requests. They are demands, with the force of law standing behind them. You don't make good faith attempts to comply with them. You comply, or risk severe consequences (in this case, 1M euro/day). If Amazon can't comply in the time frame allowed, shutting down is probably the right call both for their business and from a public morals perspective.
The court order doesn't require a "good faith attempt"
It specifies to only ship essential items and proscribes a 1-million euro fine for every mistake Amazon makes. I don't even think it defines essential (I don't speak french and I don't see anything obvious in the order defining it, perhaps there's a callout in the text to another declaration which defines essential).
A much more reasonable requirement would have been to tell Amazon to not ship any non-essential items and to fine them 10x the value of anything they ship over, say, 5-10% their total shipments.
E.g. If Amazon ships 90 packages of toilet paper/essential items, they can accidentally ship up to 10 pairs of shoes/non-essential items. If they ship 11 non-essential items they would be fined 10x the value of that item.
Seems like that would be a much smarter way of laying-out that decision.
If France wants compliance, they have a duty to produce an order that's possible to comply with. It seems legitimate for a company to not want to be subject to an impossible order.
Original title was "Amazon Threatens to Suspend French Deliveries After Court Order", and Bloomberg just changed it. You could have assumed good faith.
They don't threaten, they obey the court that asked them to suspend deliveries because employees were not properly cared for. Let's not turn things around.
Don't worry, if Amazon stops selling altogether, small businesses will be more than happy to take back some market share.
Amazon isn't able to meet demand for medical or safety products. Or home workout equipment. The only video game systems are from price gouging third parties. They've only recently caught up on toilet paper.
I'm not sure why you think Amazon is somehow immune.
Then Amazon may need a carve-out in best practices to supply essential services, which is what every nation has had to do in this highly-dynamic crisis.
As much as Amazon deserves some bad publicity for how they handle their warehouse and wholefoods workers in the US, in this case I feel like they're being vilified unfairly for the shipping of non-essentials.
Walmart is shipping whatever-the-fuck, I can order nightstands and a bed on wayfair and weed from the SQDC (government)... Let's be clear, marijuana is not an essential for all but a very small percentage of the population using it as medecine...
Yet everyone's roasting Amazon for operating like it's business as usual while the smaller players run wild.
Shipping non-essential items is not the problem here. They can ship whatever they want, but while doing so have to protect their workers. Amazon is infamous for creating horrible working conditions in their shipping centers, it's not a surprise that how they react to the virus is observed very closely. Especially in a country like France that already has a critical stance towards big US companies.
I'm assuming you didn't read the article? Banning the sale of non-essential goods is mentioned multiple times.
>Amazon.com Inc. threatened to stop activity at its fulfillment centers in France after a court order banned the sale of non-essential goods, concluding the retailer isn’t doing enough to protect staff from the Covid-19 pandemic.
And 24 hours to implement improved health procedures? Without being told which ones specifically to implement?
There's basically no limit to improving health procedures. They could go as far as hourly temperature checks, glove changes after every package, no more then 10 people in the entire warehouse, etc etc. And if they don't go far enough (according to the courts, in 2 years when all the appeals are finally figured out), then they could be fined 1.1 million a day since tomorrow.
> Amazon is infamous for creating horrible working conditions in their shipping centers
Has anyone actually done a fair comparison of Amazon warehouse working conditions with those of other warehouses? Other than the presence of robots to help our their workers, nothing I've seen and read about strikes me as being out of line with any other warehouse. Or are they just the ones getting the flack because they are the largest and most visible?
If Amazon is "infamous for creating horrible working conditions in their shipping centers" then the only people you would expect that would be working there would be the bottom of the barrel workers, the people who can't get jobs elsewhere. Everyone else would move to better jobs.
My comment is global in scope as many governments have imposed essential business only rules and Amazon is getting roasted for continuing selling non-essentials though their business is classified as essential. This was covered in the article and is one of the main reasons why they're being ordered to shutdown and only sell essentials.
The same media attention is happening in the US, even vloggers with different demographics are getting their kicks in, Louis Rossman who kicked off the right to repair movement made a video about Amazon selling dildos at prime speed when ppe is delayed weeks.
I would argue marijuana sales are essential. Not for the users necessarily but for the operations of the government itself. My state of Oregon just had its highest liquor sales ever in March. Recreational MJ sales haven't been released but are likely similar. The tax receipts from this will help offset the huge hit to income tax revenue that is coming and give the state government at least a chance to keep things running as this drags on.
On the flip side, if “highest liquor sales ever” also means “highest liquor consumption ever”, I could easily see long-term health costs exceeding short term tax receipts.
I’m glad that this is not happening in my country. Banning Amazon from selling nonessential items seems detrimental to society. The “nonessential items” that Amazon sells are still pretty important for living my life. I’m sure there are some ways that worker health could be protected better, but at this point I wouldn’t trust the French government to make intelligent judgments on behalf of public health.
I agree. There are a ton of goods in the world one might initially think are non-essential, but become essential in the right circumstances (think: batteries, computer cables, tape, etc). There are many goods which would easily classify as "essential" under a court order, despite not being essential (think: oreos, mountain dew, doritos, etc).
This distinction cannot be legislated. Amazon is absolutely in the right to shut down for a bit while they try to figure it out. They're also absolutely in the wrong for the way they've treated their employees over the past month. Both of these can be true! Its like everyone in this thread needs to pick a side, and the other side is crazy for thinking the way they do.
> Banning Amazon from selling nonessential items seems detrimental to society.
My hot take: having companies, that are so large that banning them is detrimental to society, is detrimental to society and extremely dangerous. We should never give so much power to one corporation. It should always be possible to reject a company.
In American English (notably distinct in this respect from British English), the term "government" means all state organs; for example, we would consider the Supreme Court to be part of the Federal Government. So the term includes what would in many other countries be called the government, the parliament, the civil service, the judiciary, etc.
Not sure where the above poster is from, but some parts of the world use a different definition for "government" than other parts of the world. In the USA, for example, all three separate branches of "government" (Legislature, Executive, and Judicial) are considered "the government".
Most people consider the legal system (i refuse to call any state run court a justice system) part of the government, it is the enforcement arm of the government
Executive, Legislative, Judicial, are the 3 general area's of a functioning government
Amazon isn't the only provider of these non essential goods and most others are now probably thinking twice about flaunting the currently stringent worker safety regulations.
Are you sure? The article is pretty explicit about them being banned from shipping "non-essential" goods there. It says they're ordered to do that AND protect their workers.
I'm curious how many of those operate independently from Amazon. In the US at least, there are several storefronts that (on the back-end) actually contract out warehousing or shipping to AMZN.
All of these examples are large independent companies that operate without Amazon network. Very few French companies use Amazon to ship products, and only small ones.
And all those other websites should have to comply with the exact same restrictions or shut down. The law should not be applied unequally to just one company.
According to this reuters[1] article the distancing rules weren't enforced. Limiting Amazon to the sale of essential goods seems to be intended to reduce the workforce and ensure that distancing rules could be observed consistently. I am not french however at least in Germany the distancing rules are handed down from the government and not something Amazon could simply cast beside in favor of its own measures.
Realistically, it's they want to have their cake and eat it too.
If Amazon is not taking precautions and putting the population at risk, they should be shut down.
Amazon is already putting massive delays on non-essential goods (delivery times have moved from 2 days to up to 1 month) in order to prioritize moving essential goods. Not to mention, they've said they're hiring due to the massive influx of orders for essential goods.
So logically speaking, if a large portion of their current activity is already essential goods, what is this besides a way to look like they're standing up to the big bad foreign tech company while getting to keep their deliveries flowing in (all without actually protecting anyone)
Readit News
> Laurent Degousee, of the SUD-Commerce union that was behind the complaint, acknowledged that Amazon had "not stood idly by" amid the crisis but had taken a "slew of measures without any evaluation".
> He said that the taking of temperatures had sometimes caused queues and thus risked possible infection.
So Amazon had the choice of either;
a) taking the court ruling seriously and doubling down on efforts to ensure worker safety and working out what needs to be done to lift the suspension
or
b) raising a middle finger and threatening to suspend all deliveries, thereby adding fuel to the notion that Amazon doesn't take worker safety seriously and creating opposition in France that will now work on strategies for "what to do if Amazon pulls out of our market?"
Which one seems like a smarter response?
I don’t see this. The court gave a short deadline for meeting an ambiguous target with respect to a complex international logistics network. Amazon’s choices are to sloppily comply or halt until they can properly do so. They’re choosing the latter.
That keeps warehouse workers safe. And it gives Amazon time to figure out how to only ship that which the court would consider essential. The only loser is the French consumer, and they (will eventually) have other options.
Given Amazon's recent behaviors around worker protection, I expect their action here is chosen for maximum drama, an attempt to pressure the French government, and to warn other governments that they will disrupt the delivery of essential supplies if they don't get their way. So I agree with harryh; it's a middle finger.
It's been deeply disappointing to me. I've been on the fence with Amazon for a while about labor issues. But their behavior recently has crossed a line. I canceled my Prime membership yesterday. If they don't rapidly reform, it'll be the end of my 23 years as a customer.
The court gave a short deadline because it should have been done a while ago already. Let's not pretend like it's a surprise.
The government asked to stop any non-vital activity a month ago. Amazon, instead of interpreting this as: let's reduce our activity to just the part that qualifies as vital (vital for the country, not vital for Amazon margins), interpreted this as: since we ship some vital stuff, all of our activity is vital, and can proceed like business as usual. This is just a usual greedy move where profit comes before health of the employees.
Everyone in the world is trying to meet an ambiguous target. You know what happened to all the small businesses in my neighborhood? They are closed until further notice.
Amazon employs an underclass (warehouse workers) that we all expect to risk their lives for our comfort. French court said: "non". Good for them.
According to the article, Amazon had a month and didn't get its act together, and this is the follow-up action by the court.
ambiguous target
Says Amazon. Amazon doesn't say what was ambiguous.
with respect to a complex international logistics network
You don't get to endanger people's lives just because you're a big company operating in multiple markets. Plus, Amazon isn't exactly hurting for money.
And if we're being intellectually honest here, you can't even "sloppily" comply with ambiguous targets.
“Our interpretation suggests that we may be forced to suspend the activity of our distribution centers in France,” Amazon said in a statement. “The court gave categories that are very general and create ambiguity that would be too hard to implement, this is a complex business to run,” a spokeswoman for Amazon told Bloomberg.
Amazon isn’t able to reduce its activity and must shut down completely “because of the terms and conditions of the court order, especially because of their ambiguity and the absence of definition,” the e-commerce giant said in an internal memo that was seen by Bloomberg. The company will suspend activity at its fulfillment centers for an “initial period” of five days starting on April 16, it said.
5 days, with 100% of their pay btw. That does not sound like a "threat" to me. Why frame it as such?
This headline could have easily been written as "Amazon states it may suspend French deliveries ..." but that doesn't portray Amazon as negatively as the author wanted. Amazon is meant to be the villain in this article.
If the deadline was, say, 1 week, then I'd agree that it seems like a fair demand.
If they're not happy, they can leave. It's not like we don't have other (law complying) marketplaces.
This is a tax. The whole point is that they should've been doing this from the start. They've had 4 months of moments to figure out how to keep their workers safe, and the fact that they have union busting history makes this all worse.
The courts ordered them to meet an unrealistic bar, so the only way to comply with the court order is to shut down for a week.
This is what the judge ordered. If the judge didn’t want to create artificial shortages during a crisis, they should have thought more carefully before deciding the case. Note that Amazon’s appealing the ruling, so hopefully the judge will be overruled.
Mission impossible really.
So court had set them up to break the law.
A month of non-compliance is the middle finger. The 24 hour deadline is a 'This is your last warning'.
>Which one seems like a smarter response?
Amazon's response seems reasonable to me, under the circumstances. Your characterization of their response is unfair.
I do, however, think it serves as a signal to the French courts that rulings of this sort can have unintended consequences, and perhaps more care should be taken: 24 hours is not a reasonable deadline for such an undertaking. It seems strange the court did not enter into a dialogue about how long changes would take: It is an obvious issue that would need to be addressed. Had they done so, the court, rather than Amazon, could have decided what happens in the interim before a reduction to "essentials" could be implemented.
Deleted Comment
I doubt they could comply with significantly upping their product control.
Dead Comment
Bottom line, based on the little that was in the article, if coronavirus shows up in your facility despite your doubled down efforts you're still liable. A court of law is a court of law in the US. The liability would be with you. Again, maybe there was some more clear instruction given? But if not, there's a lot of rope there to hang yourself with. Best to just stop doing business in that jurisdiction. At least until you have a better idea what's going on.
Obviously you shut down. I don't think any reasonable people have an issue with that. What I'd like to understand more is what are the steps sufficient with guaranteeing, (or, I guess, better protecting), health? I can't really make out what is not being done that needs to be done vs what is being done that shouldn't be done vs etc etc etc.
Now, no, Amazon can't possibly do what the order asks in 24 hours. But they certainly could make a good faith attempt.
I made this point yesterday, but I remain amazed at the extent to which Amazon let itself be painted the "bad guy" in all of this, simply by not being willing to negotiate with their workers on an equal basis. A world where Amazon had a healthy relationship with its unions isn't one where everyone comes at them with a knife during a crisis trying to protect their workers.
In my understanding, court orders are not a polite requests. They are demands, with the force of law standing behind them. You don't make good faith attempts to comply with them. You comply, or risk severe consequences (in this case, 1M euro/day). If Amazon can't comply in the time frame allowed, shutting down is probably the right call both for their business and from a public morals perspective.
It specifies to only ship essential items and proscribes a 1-million euro fine for every mistake Amazon makes. I don't even think it defines essential (I don't speak french and I don't see anything obvious in the order defining it, perhaps there's a callout in the text to another declaration which defines essential).
A much more reasonable requirement would have been to tell Amazon to not ship any non-essential items and to fine them 10x the value of anything they ship over, say, 5-10% their total shipments.
E.g. If Amazon ships 90 packages of toilet paper/essential items, they can accidentally ship up to 10 pairs of shoes/non-essential items. If they ship 11 non-essential items they would be fined 10x the value of that item.
Seems like that would be a much smarter way of laying-out that decision.
Don't worry, if Amazon stops selling altogether, small businesses will be more than happy to take back some market share.
Deleted Comment
I'm not sure why you think Amazon is somehow immune.
Deleted Comment
Walmart is shipping whatever-the-fuck, I can order nightstands and a bed on wayfair and weed from the SQDC (government)... Let's be clear, marijuana is not an essential for all but a very small percentage of the population using it as medecine...
Yet everyone's roasting Amazon for operating like it's business as usual while the smaller players run wild.
>Amazon.com Inc. threatened to stop activity at its fulfillment centers in France after a court order banned the sale of non-essential goods, concluding the retailer isn’t doing enough to protect staff from the Covid-19 pandemic.
And 24 hours to implement improved health procedures? Without being told which ones specifically to implement?
There's basically no limit to improving health procedures. They could go as far as hourly temperature checks, glove changes after every package, no more then 10 people in the entire warehouse, etc etc. And if they don't go far enough (according to the courts, in 2 years when all the appeals are finally figured out), then they could be fined 1.1 million a day since tomorrow.
Has anyone actually done a fair comparison of Amazon warehouse working conditions with those of other warehouses? Other than the presence of robots to help our their workers, nothing I've seen and read about strikes me as being out of line with any other warehouse. Or are they just the ones getting the flack because they are the largest and most visible?
Deleted Comment
Is this is what is happening?
The same media attention is happening in the US, even vloggers with different demographics are getting their kicks in, Louis Rossman who kicked off the right to repair movement made a video about Amazon selling dildos at prime speed when ppe is delayed weeks.
On the flip side, if “highest liquor sales ever” also means “highest liquor consumption ever”, I could easily see long-term health costs exceeding short term tax receipts.
This distinction cannot be legislated. Amazon is absolutely in the right to shut down for a bit while they try to figure it out. They're also absolutely in the wrong for the way they've treated their employees over the past month. Both of these can be true! Its like everyone in this thread needs to pick a side, and the other side is crazy for thinking the way they do.
My hot take: having companies, that are so large that banning them is detrimental to society, is detrimental to society and extremely dangerous. We should never give so much power to one corporation. It should always be possible to reject a company.
This is a justice decision. The government has nothing to do with it.
Executive, Legislative, Judicial, are the 3 general area's of a functioning government
Dead Comment
We have plenty of other websites to order from: fnac, darty, ruducommerce, cdiscount, etc.
This is going to be good for the french economy, and a good message to american giants that they are not above the law.
I'm Canadian and I've seen that the US tends to let companies do anything, provided they funnel enough campaign funding to politicians via lobbying
basically legalized bribes
The law here doesn't forbid to ship non-essential items, it only forces to protect your workers.
Deleted Comment
> Amazon “evidently failed to comply with obligations to protect the health of employees,” judges said in their Tuesday ruling.
That results in
> a court order banned the sale of non-essential goods, concluding the retailer isn’t doing enough to protect staff from the Covid-19 pandemic.
I think there's something missing from one reason (not good enough health practices according to the judge) to lead to ban non-essential goods sales.
Can some fill in what's missing (with references) please?
[1]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-amazon...
If Amazon is not taking precautions and putting the population at risk, they should be shut down.
Amazon is already putting massive delays on non-essential goods (delivery times have moved from 2 days to up to 1 month) in order to prioritize moving essential goods. Not to mention, they've said they're hiring due to the massive influx of orders for essential goods.
So logically speaking, if a large portion of their current activity is already essential goods, what is this besides a way to look like they're standing up to the big bad foreign tech company while getting to keep their deliveries flowing in (all without actually protecting anyone)