Amazon employee is angry after being fired for taking bereavement leave!

In the past, we occasionally saw news like this in China: employees wanted to take leave to go home and see their critically ill family members for the last time, but their leaders were reluctant to approve the leave, and as a result, they missed the last minute and regretted it for the rest of their lives.

However, I didn’t expect that similar things would happen in the United States, which emphasizes “human rights”.

It is understood that an employee at an Amazon warehouse in California took a few days of bereavement leave after his parents died, but learned during the holiday that he had been fired by the company.

The former Amazon employee named Scott Brock has filed a lawsuit in a local court, hoping to hold the e-commerce giant accountable for "retaliatory" dismissal.

In the lawsuit, Scott said he had been working as a picker at Amazon's Baysfield warehouse for 14 months. His mother died unexpectedly in January of this year, so he asked for four days of bereavement leave, which was approved by his supervisor.

On the third day of his bereavement leave, his father also passed away due to excessive grief. Scott had no time to feel sad, so he immediately contacted the company's human resources department to extend his bereavement leave and sent his parents' obituaries at the same time.

As a result, the human resources department rejected his request to extend bereavement leave the next day and terminated his employment on the same day.

The lawsuit states that Amazon's actions violated California's Employment and Family Leave Protection Act and requires the company to pay corresponding compensation, including wages, attorney fees, medical expenses, and emotional damages.

According to a newly introduced law in California, if an employee's family member dies, the company must give the employee up to five days of bereavement leave, and cannot fire an employee who takes bereavement leave for any reason. However, an employee must have been employed for 12 months before he or she can take bereavement leave.

Scott's attorney, Ron Zambrano, called Amazon's actions "truly despicable" in a press release, noting the company has a poor reputation for its treatment of employees.

In 2021, a jury awarded Amazon more than $300,000 to a female employee in Santa Ana in a wrongful termination lawsuit, and the judge later added $2 million in attorney fees.

Last April, a New York judge ordered Amazon to rehire an employee who was "illegally" fired by the company for protesting working during the epidemic.

As of press time, Amazon has not responded to this matter.

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