Amazon is all about the money. They fully admit to firing people based on a computer algorithm. They also are a huge company, with over 600,000 employees. With that many employees, you’ll end up with a lot of pregnant women–each woman has a manager. All it takes for a lawsuit is for an employee to feel that they were treated unfairly and for a lawyer to be willing to take the case.
While some employment lawsuits result in huge payouts, most don’t. But Amazon also has deep pockets, and where there’s one employee complaint, you’re likely to find others (just given the sheer volume of employees), so they can be a good target.
All of this is simply background, which doesn’t answer the question: did Amazon illegally fire these seven pregnant women?
To keep reading, click here: 7 Lawsuits Claim Amazon Fires Pregnant Women
I would imagine that Amazon’s use of algorithms would make discrimination cases harder to prove. All they have to do is point to what the formula was and how it spilled out into a particular round of layoffs and show that the pregnant employees were just the number that came up. (Not that I support using a random number generator to do hiring and firing, but in this situation, algorithims may work in Amazon’s favor).
There’s a sizable body or research showing that algorithms/artificial intelligence can produced biased outcomes, so no, I would never see the use of such a device as ruling out discrimination (Amazon itself had to scrap a candidate-evaluation tool that turned out to favor male candidates).
Half the problem with today’s employees is the attitude that merely showing up for work deserves a wage. Like the article states, Amazon jobs are not for those individuals who don’t like to keep moving at a given pace ( their expected productivity level). I like that EvilHRlady comments on the difference between assumed “ privilege” work adaptation performance and real life adaptation to a disability. Yeah pregnancy effects every woman different but unless they have a physically disabling reaction (whatever that requires a doctor document ), most pregnant women can continue to do all activities they did prior to pregnancy. Being pregnant is not an excuse to not be productive and if your performance starts deteriorates you can expect to be disciplined for it.