NEW YORK — Four former Amazon warehouse employees have filed a proposed nationwide class action alleging that the retailer denied basic pregnancy accommodations and penalised workers for breaks or medical absences.
The complaint, filed on 8 September in federal court in Brooklyn, invokes the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and New York labour law. The plaintiffs are represented by A Better Balance and a private law firm. No court has decided their allegations or certified a national class.
The workers say requests for chairs, lighter lifting, bathroom and water breaks, prenatal appointments and temporary schedule changes were delayed or refused. They also allege that Amazon deducted time from attendance balances and demanded unnecessary medical documentation.
Jennifer Hatch says her doctor recommended periodic sitting, a lifting limit and shorter shifts during a high-risk pregnancy. Her complaint alleges that a manager would not let her use an available chair while approval was pending and that she was later dismissed after leaving for hospital care.
Willamina Barclay alleges she received a termination warning one day after being taken from a Rochester warehouse by wheelchair and hospitalised with pregnancy-related pain. Amazon says the accounts contain inaccuracies and omit important details.
Company spokesperson Kelly Nantel said Amazon supports tens of thousands of employees with pregnancy adjustments each year and approved more than 99.9% of pregnancy-related accommodation requests during the previous year. That company-wide figure does not by itself resolve what happened to the four plaintiffs, just as individual allegations do not establish a systematic national policy.
The federal law, effective since June 2023, generally requires employers with at least 15 workers to provide reasonable adjustments for known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth or related conditions unless doing so creates undue hardship. The point is preventive: a worker should not have to choose between medical safety and a pay cheque.
Warehouse systems can make that promise difficult. Automated attendance balances and productivity measures may treat a medically necessary pause as a performance failure unless managers can override the system quickly and workers know how to appeal.
The lawsuit seeks compensation and policy changes. Its wider value will depend on evidence: approval times, denials, reasons, terminations and outcomes across facilities. A headline approval percentage should be auditable and broken down by type of request.
Pregnancy protection becomes real in ordinary moments—a stool, a restroom visit, a prenatal appointment—not only in written policy. The court must now determine whether Amazon’s system delivered those protections or made workers pay for requesting them.
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