"We've had several workers test positive for Coronavirus, but they only do a deep clean once a week, and tell us the chemical they use lasts up to three days if someone tests positive the day after a deep clean," a worker at a XPO facility in Laredo, Texas that handles freight being imported and exported across the U.S.-Mexico border told Motherboard. There was no social distancing being enforced." On paper, XPO has a good safety system, but unfortunately no one from management was enforcing it. "It went from a couple of cases one day to 70 odd people testing positive. Motherboard agreed to grant the worker anonymity because they feared retaliation from XPO. "People were incredibly concerned about the speed at which the outbreak at our facility happened," a warehouse worker at the XPO facility in Swindon, United Kingdom that experienced the mass outbreak told Motherboard. ![]() “My worry is that they didn’t require testing for any of us, didn’t say we could get a test, and my wife works in a nursing home. “They took our temperate for a few days in the beginning but now they’ve stopped even though people are still testing positive for COVID-19,” he continued. His route runs between Eerie, Pennsylvania and Dunkirk, New York. Now they supposedly got a policy about masks but the guys don’t wear them,” Bryon Wilkinson who has worked as an XPO freight driver for 31 years, told Motherboard. “When the pandemic first started we didn’t have any masks and sanitizer. Workers across the United States have described inadequate safety precautions at facilities, including the failures to do deep cleaning and temperatures once positive cases are reported in facilities. A 64-worker outbreak at its warehouse facility in the United Kingdom in July did not result in a shutdown of the facility. The report claims XPO failed to source its own warehouse workers with masks for weeks. “ deserve to know how many of their co-workers have been infected and what the company is doing to make sure no one else is put at unnecessary risk.” "XPO Logistics should release the number of COVID-19 cases that have been confirmed in its global workforce,” Noel Coard, an author of the report, and the inland transport sections secretary of International Transport Workers Federation, which represents millions of transportation workers across the world, told Motherboard. In April, XPO Logistics CEO Jacobs wrote in a letter to shareholders about the impacts of COVID-19 on business, "We’ve deliberately built XPO like a bulletproof tank to surmount all kinds of challenges."īut the report's authors strongly rebuke this statement, stressing that the company sacrificed worker safety to keep up with the demands of its delivery services during the pandemic, and urge the company to release the number of COVID-19 cases in its facilites. “Our primary focus is safeguarding our employees,” the company said. On it’s website XPO notes that it implemented a number of safety protocols to protect employees during the onset of COVID-19, including social distancing in all of its warehouses, no contact deliveries, free COVID-19 testing, and two weeks of paid sick leave for full-time employees. ![]() In 2019, XPO reported more than $16 billion in revenue, and its billionaire CEO, Bradley Jacobs, made $26 million. XPO, which is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, facilitates 10 million last mile deliveries each year, outpacing every other logistics company operating in North America, including Amazon, for the last mile delivery of heavy goods. “The report repeats wholly inaccurate allegations that have been entirely debunked,” the spokesperson said. Researchers from a coalition of 11 unions, collectively known as the XPO Global Union Family, which includes the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in the United States, came together to write the report "Delivering Injustice," which details everything from the company's alleged failure to prevent warehouse workers from spreading COVID-19 in its facilities and shorting workers on pension increases to its contracting of drivers from Eastern Europe who live out of their trucks for months, workplace injuries and subsequent deaths of several workers in recent years on the job, and union-busting tactics that have resulted in $500,000 in National Labor Relations Board settlement fees to workers in the United States.Ī XPO spokesperson told Motherboard many of these claims were outdated. "But behind the glossy marketing, are supply chains mired in worker exploitation, a cavalier and even negligent approach to safety that has led to injury and death, and a company where workers who protest against pregnancy discrimination and harassment are met by retaliation." "XPO markets itself as a global leader in providing transport, logistics and last mile delivery services," the report's authors write.
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