Amazon has closed its six French distribution centres, two days after a French court ruled it was not doing enough to protect workers from the coronavirus pandemic.
The company is facing mounting scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic as it tries to deal with a surge in online orders during lockdowns while keeping employees safe.
On Tuesday a court in Nanterre, Paris, issued an emergency ruling requiring the company to stop selling non-essential goods for a month while it works out new safety measures.
Sales of food, medicine and hygiene supplies are still allowed under the ruling. However, Amazon France said that given the “inherent complexity” of its activities, and the potential €1m (£870,000) fine for each violation of the ruling, the risk was too high.
Amazon France’s chief executive, Frédéric Duval, denounced the court’s order on Thursday, saying the company had spent “colossal amounts” on health precautions including sanitary gels and face masks. He said the firm would appeal.
Duval said that rather than limiting its activities, Amazon had temporarily suspended trade through the warehouses because the court order was too vague.
“There is a huge ambiguity,” he told RTL radio. “Is a nail clipper a hygiene product? Is a condom a medical item? I’m not able to define that.”
He said the company would work with unions to ensure the sites could reopen quickly, but added: “I cannot confirm at this stage on what date they will reopen.”
Amazon’s vice-president for the EU, Roy Perticucci, has stepped down, the company confirmed on Wednesday, a day after the ruling.
The six warehouses in France employ 10,000 permanent and temporary employees. Amazon will tap a state partial unemployment scheme to pay its employees, according to an internal document seen by Reuters.
The shutdown plays into a public war of words between Amazon and the French unions that represent its warehouse workers. In a statement, the company squarely laid the blame for the shutdown on the union complaint that led to the ruling.
The Solidaires union, which brought the complaint, said it was merely asking Amazon to enforce a ban on non-essential items that the company “has been claiming for weeks”, and said a similar judgment had been levied against La Poste, the French state postal service, the week before.
Amazon insisted it was providing adequate security measures for staff, noting the implementation of temperature checks and mask distribution.
The company claimed it had sent more than 127,000 packets of disinfectant wipes and 27,000 litres of sanitising gel, as well as 1.5m masks, to the distribution centres.
But the court found Amazon had not done enough to enforce physical distancing, to ensure that turnstiles and locker rooms were virus-free, or to increase cleaning of its warehouses. Unions said one worker infected with the virus was in intensive care.
Customers who order from third-party companies that use the Amazon website but send items directly will still receive their goods.
Amazon is no stranger to using shutdowns as a political weapon. In 2018 the company blocked shipments to Australia from its overseas stores after a sales tax was imposed on imported goods. But that standoff came to an end when Amazon backed down six months later, reopening overseas shipments in time for the Black Friday sales.
The French labour minister, Muriel Pénicaud, told LCI radio on Thursday: “I hope, for the sake of Amazon employees and French clients, that business can resume as soon as possible, but with security protocols in place.”