#Amazon warehouse workers slam phone ban after tornado deaths

Amazon workers are slamming the company’s ban on cellphones in work areas after a deadly tornado flattened an Illinois warehouse and killed at least six employees. 

The Jeff Bezos-owned company currently bans workers from using their phones on warehouse floors except during emergencies. The company, which had previously required warehouse workers to leave their phones in lockers or cars, temporarily loosened this rule during the pandemic and is now gradually re-introducing phone bans, according to Bloomberg. 

Now, Amazon workers argue that employees need phones to access alerts about tornadoes and other emergencies — and some are threatening to quit if the company goes back to its strict no-phone policy. 

“I’m not working without my phone,” one user wrote on a Reddit forum for Amazon workers. “I’m not going to quit, I’m going to either work with my phone or make them fire me for that reason.” 

“If people who survived can prove that they got warnings via phone before managers told them to shelter in place, and that their phones saved lives, I’d say that’s a pretty good argument for keeping them,” another said. 

“They’ll ban phones again,” a third predicted. “They don’t give a s—t about the workers.” 

As deadly tornadoes swept the midwest on Friday night, Amazon’s Edwardsville, Illinois warehouse was struck by a tornado that caused both sides the building to cave inward. The collapse killed at least six people, including a Navy veteran and a 34-year-old delivery driver named Etheria S. Hebb who was the mother of a 1-year-old son.

“She was a wonderful mother,” Hebb’s sister told The Post on Sunday. “She was such a beautiful soul.” 

Amazon, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is far from the only company to restrict phones on warehouse floors. 

After a mass shooter killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis this April, some employees said they had difficulty communicating with their families during and after the shooting because of the logistics company’s cell phone ban. 

“It’s certainly been a night of frustration and uncertainty for those families,” McCartt, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s deputy chief of criminal investigations, said at the time. “I think that frustration was exacerbated by the fact that many of the employees did not have cellphones on them in the facility.”