COVID-19 Response

Supporting Front-Line Employees and Partners

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$500 Million

Thank You Bonus

We gave our employees a special one-time "Thank You bonus" totaling over $500 million. All front-line employees and partners who were with the company throughout the month of June will receive a bonus.
$25 Million

Relief Fund

We established a $25 million relief fund for partners (e.g., delivery drivers) and seasonal employees facing financial hardship or quarantine.

Protecting Our Employees

Our top concern is ensuring the health and safety of our employees, and we expect to invest approximately $4 billion on COVID-related initiatives getting products to customers and keeping employees safe.

We’ve made over 150 process updates—from enhanced cleaning and social distancing measures to new efforts like aerosol disinfectant spraying. We’re spending over $85 million redeploying team members, including some of our most talented software engineers, moving them from their typical roles onto teams where they can work on cutting-edge safety programs. We distribute personal protective equipment to our employees and require them to use face coverings while at work. We introduced and scaled temperature checks across our worldwide facilities.

As of May 2020, we have:

Provided 100 million+ masks to our fulfillment center and office sites.
Added 2,298 handwashing stations.
Added 5,765+ janitorial staffers to our typical teams.
Provided an additional 34 million gloves.
Added 48 million ounces of hand sanitizer.
Purchased 31,000+ thermometers and 1,115+ thermal cameras.

Someone diagnosed with COVID-19 will receive up to two weeks of paid time off. This is in addition to their other paid and unpaid time off options.

Amazon associates wearing face masks walk along a corridor of a fulfillment center. Behind them, a screen shows visual social distance assistance.

Improving Workplace Safety with Artificial Intelligence

We are now using computer vision technologies in our buildings to help site leaders identify high traffic areas and implement additional measures to improve social distancing. This program, which we call “Distant Assistant,” provides immediate feedback to our employees on whether they are maintaining six-feet of physical distance from one another.

As people walk past the camera, a monitor displays live video with visual overlays. Individuals remaining six feet apart are highlighted with green circles, while those who are closer together are highlighted with red circles. The on-screen indicators are designed to remind and encourage employees to maintain appropriate distance from others. We are excited to open source the software and AI behind this innovation so that anyone can create their own Distance Assistant. Individuals and businesses large and small can download the package at no cost and get up and running with just a computer and camera.

Supporting Our Suppliers

Amazon is committed to supporting our suppliers, their workers, and their communities as they are impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

$1 Million

We have dedicated over $1 million in initial investments to support response and recovery efforts in our supply chain. We are continuing to monitor suppliers for compliance with our Supply Chain Standards and are making necessary modifications to supplier assessment procedures based on internal and external stakeholder recommendations. We are working to balance the need to limit the movement of people and allow suppliers time to support workers and prepare production schedules with the need to have our eyes and ears on the ground.

Partnerships

We are partnering with organizations providing critical support to suppliers and workers during this devastating pandemic.

Amader Kotha Helpline

We support the Amader Kotha Helpline, which provides workers with a grievance mechanism to report and resolve factory concerns in the ready-made garment sector. Our contribution will help support the organization’s increased call volumes and the 24/7 factory grievance lines in regions impacted by COVID-19. The Helpline serves as a resource for 600+ factories, 30 of which are Amazon suppliers, reaching 1.5 million workers in Bangladesh, and supporting them in safely transitioning back into the workplace.
BSR HERproject

As part of our longstanding relationship with BSR’s HERproject, we helped to launch HERessentials, a new venture that will digitize HERproject’s and Empower@Work’s learning modules into a six-module Digital Worker and two-module Digital Manager Toolkit curriculum for remote access. The toolkit covers topics like personal hygiene, reproductive health and breastfeeding, and financial planning, and offers local resources on mental health and domestic violence services. The toolkit will be available to 500,000 female workers by 2025 in Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, and Vietnam, and will be translated into local languages.
International Organization for Migration (IOM)

In Bangladesh, we’ve partnered with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to distribute medical supplies and COVID-19 related resources for frontline doctors, nurses, and medical workers operating in the largest refugee camp in the world. The contribution supports the procurement of lifesaving PPE for 23 IOM-managed health facilities, serving to benefit both refugee and host community populations in the region.
NEST

Amazon partnered with Nest, a nonprofit building a hand-worker economy of artisans to increase global workforce inclusivity, improve women’s well-being, and preserve important cultural traditions around the world. As part of this partnership, we have been able to distribute over 100 economic relief grants to artisan businesses across the globe. We were also able to support the Nest’s PPE Purchasing initiative—a program that purchased over 200,000 protective masks to be delivered to front-line workers. This program distributed over $500,000 in economic relief value to 57 businesses, which altogether employed 10,510 skilled artisans.
SCORE Training

Amazon is supporting the implementation of SCORE Training in 42 factories, which is helping factories plan their production schedule, reorganize production lines, and implement guidelines for more social distance and increased safety. Factories enrolled in the SCORE Training Program receive support implementing health and safety protocols and providing workers with training on health and sanitation, which has improved the working conditions of 20,000 workers, including 9,000 women.
Swasti

In India, we partnered with Swasti—a global nonprofit committed to ensuring access to quality healthcare for workers and those in marginalized communities—to adapt their worker well-being program (Invest4Wellness) to provide support to workers in factories impacted by COVID-19. With our support, Swasti is setting up a worker helpline, developing health protocols for workers to return to work safely, establishing an emergency response team, and providing critical mental health, healthcare, and social entitlement support to workers, their families, and their communities. These services are available to seven factories in our supply chain, reaching 3,500 workers—including 1,400 women—and their families.

Mitigating Risk to Workers

We have urged suppliers to take the following steps to mitigate risk to workers:

Follow all government safety recommendations before resuming or continuing to manufacture Amazon-branded products and take appropriate steps to ensure safe and clean workplaces.
Avoid ending worker contracts where workers are sick or caring for sick family members.
Ensure monitoring of worker hours and proper overtime notices as factories ramp up production.

Investing in Communities

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has impacted communities across the world, including in the cities home to our U.S. corporate headquarters in Seattle, WA and Arlington, VA. To support those communities during this health crisis, we have quickly ramped up our response efforts and unique programs.

€21M

Donated in Europe

To support those most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
$5M

in Amazon Devices

Donated globally to those in need.
6M

Meals Delivered

Working with food banks in 25 cities across the country.
8,200

Laptops Donated

To Seattle Public Schools students who do not have access to a device at home.

Putting Amazon's Unique Assets to Work

Amazon Flex Drivers Amazon Future Engineer AWS InCommunities AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative

A delivery driver wearing a mask and an Amazon vest loads donations from a food pantry into his vehicle.

We believe Amazon has a unique role to play providing a critical service for families to get the items they need, without leaving their homes. Amazon partnered with food banks across the country to donate delivery services of shelf-stable groceries and pre-packaged foods to serve 6 million meals, using our robust network of Amazon Flex drivers. Amazon’s food bank partners are responsible for providing, preparing and packaging all shelf-stable foods. Amazon Flex delivery partners collect the pre-packaged foods from food banks, and make “no-contact” deliveries directly to the doorsteps of vulnerable groups in their own communities.

Amazon employee volunteers work on coding projects with students at Dunbar High School in Washington, DC to celebrate Amazon Future Engineer's 2,000 high schools milestone.

To enable remote learning while schools are closed, we have made Amazon Future Engineer STEM curriculum available to students in the U.S., UK, and France, reaching more than 9,000 students in the U.S. during the first week alone. Through our Amazon Future Engineer program, we’re donating 4,000 laptops to high school students across the U.S. and making new online computer science resources, including exam prep, free.

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AWS InCommunities, our AWS community engagement team, has reached out to the medical community and health workers in India to help those on the frontline by providing medical supplies and hygiene kits contributing to the fight against COVID-19. We have donated ventilators, masks, gloves, sanitizers, and other COVID-19 supplies to help the response effort. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought particular hardship to the migrant labor community in India, who depend on daily wages for essentials including food. AWS InCommunities provided over 3,600 kilograms of dry ration to migrant workers housed in Mumbai.

A microscope, test tubes, and a pipette with a drop of liquid emerging.

AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative is a global program to support customers who are working to bring better, more accurate, diagnostics solutions to market faster and promote better collaboration across organizations that are working on similar problems. As part of this, we are committing an initial investment of $20 million to accelerate diagnostic research, innovation, and development to speed our collective understanding and detection of COVID-19 and other innovate diagnostic solutions to mitigate future infectious disease outbreaks. Funding will be provided through a combination of AWS in-kind credits and technical support to assist our customers’ research teams in harnessing the full potential of the cloud to tackle this challenge.

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Amazon associate wears a mask while working. Photo taken during COVID-19 pandemic.

Amazon's COVID-19 Blog

Read updates on how we're responding to the crisis and learn more about how we're supporting our employees, customers, and communities.

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