Jeff Bezos Sued By Ex-Housekeeper Over Amazon Warehouse-Like Conditions, Racism

It isn’t just Amazon warehouse employees who are forced into finding creative solutions to use the bathroom.

A former housekeeper to Jeff Bezos has sued the Amazon founder and two companies that manage his properties, alleging that she and other employees were made to work in unsafe and unsanitary conditions – including climbing out of a laundry room window to be able to use a bathroom.

Mercedes Wedaa, who was hired in 2019, says she her job required that she “work around a family without being seen,” where she claims she worked shifts as long as 14 hours without breaks, while there was “no reasonably accessible bathroom for the housekeepers.”

When the Bezos family was at home, the housekeepers were only allowed to enter the house to clean, meaning they could not use the laundry door to access a bathroom directly, as it led only to the residence.

Instead, they would sometimes have to climb out of the laundry room window onto a path that led to a mechanical room and downstairs to a bathroom, a situation that was in place for around 18 months, Ms Wedaa claims. –Sky News

According to the complaint, the lack of easily accessible bathrooms meant that she and other housekeepers spent much of their day unable to use the toilet, which resulted in frequent urinary tract infections.

More claims by Wedaa include:

No room for housekeepers to rest
Housekeepers were forced to eat meals in a laundry room
Hispanic employees were discriminated against because of their race
Undocumented workers were brought in on a contract basis
Lack of rest breaks and unsafe working conditions
Weda claims she was demoted and dismissed due to complaints despite never having been disciplined over performance

A lawyer for Bezos, Harry Korrell, said the claims were ‘absurd,’ and that she filed the lawsuit after Bezos declined a $9 million demand.

“Ms Wedaa made over six figures annually and was the lead housekeeper,” he said. “She was responsible for her own break and meal times, and there were several bathrooms and breakrooms available to her and other staff.”

“The evidence will show that Ms Wedaa was terminated for performance reasons.”

According to Wedaa’s lawyer, Patrick McGuigan, she had “worked hard all her life, she is a very credible person and compelling evidence supports her claims.”