Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Sonia Sotomayor dissents on the Texas abortion ban, Citi will conduct an audit about the racial wealth gap, and Amazon has a paid leave problem. Have a productive Monday!
– Quick fix? Amazon’s biggest workforce problem? Paid leave.
New reporting published by the New York Times last night finds that Amazon’s internal systems for handling leave requests—for warehouse workers and corporate employees, for parental leave and medical leave—are woefully inadequate. Technical mishaps and bureaucracy have left workers missing money in their paychecks related to paid and unpaid leaves, fired when mistakenly marked as absent, or without benefits for months on end.
The problem grabbed Amazon’s attention last year when Oklahoma warehouse employee Tara Jones emailed Jeff Bezos after missing $90 in multiple paychecks: “I’m behind on bills, all because the pay team messed up,” she wrote to the Amazon founder and ex-CEO. “I’m crying as I write this email.”
Amazon acknowledges this is a problem. Bethany Reyes is a human resources employee at Amazon who has been tasked with fixing the issue, and she spoke to the NYT about the process. “A lot of times, because we’ve optimized for the customer experience, we’ve been focused on that,” she said.
So when a company spends decades becoming the go-to destination for customers around the globe, do employees get left behind? It’s certain that the technology for leave requests is less cutting-edge than Amazon’s customer-facing tech; workers who missed out on money, time, and jobs because of these mishaps were stuck dealing with automated phone trees and an internal app.
While the U.S. still lacks federally-mandated paid leave, leave processes matter even more at the nation’s second-largest private employer.
Read more of the Times‘ reporting here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Breaking news. More stories based on internal Facebook documents are set to be published this week. This piece examines how whistleblower Frances Haugen became a "power player" as she navigated and set the terms of a media rollout of the information she sought to make public. New York Times
- Court ruling. The Supreme Court declined to intervene in Texas's abortion ban on Friday, but set a timeline to resolve the question: oral arguments will be Nov. 1. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent to the court's decisions so far, saying that the Texas law and the court's choice to let it stand are "catastrophic." CNN
- Equity audit. Citigroup, led by CEO Jane Fraser, will be the first Wall Street bank to do a racial audit of itself in an attempt to understand how the bank may contribute to the racial wealth gap in the U.S. The bank says that "measurement and transparency" are important to its commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Fortune
- Vaccine chief. Sandra Gallina is head of the European Commission's health division, a job through which she ran vaccine procurement for the bloc. Now Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants to put Gallina in charge of the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority on a permanent basis, a proposal that doesn't yet have the support of all member countries. Politico
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: President Biden named Neera Tanden White House staff secretary, months after her thwarted Office of Management and Budget appointment.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Remembering Halyna Hutchins. The fatal firing of a prop gun on the set of an Alec Baldwin film has drawn attention to gun safety concerns. But it's also crystallized the legacy of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was killed last week. Her colleagues and friends say Hutchins was a "a meticulous perfectionist known for her on-the-fly creativity and boundless energy" and a rising star in Hollywood. Vulture
- Drive safe. Lyft released its first safety report last week, finding that between 2017 and 2019 more than 4,000 sexual assaults occurred between Lyft riders and drivers. About half—52%—of reports came from passengers, while 38% came from drivers. Fortune
- On board. The Israel Securities Authority is asking companies in the country to meet new standards for board diversity, but has stopped short of issuing any kind of regulation on the matter. The regulator says it wants women to hold 25% of board positions at at least half of reporting companies; currently only 16% meet that standard. Bloomberg
- Ceremonial equality. Historian Lee Bae-yong a few months ago presided over a spring ceremony at the academy Museong Seowon in South Korea—making her the first woman to oversee such a ceremony at the academy teaching the lessons of Confucius and other philosophers. "Women, too, can serve in the ceremony, if they're qualified," Lee says of her milestone. NPR
ON MY RADAR
Amanda Knox was exonerated. That doesn't mean she's free New York Times
Pregnancy loss is common. Paid time off afterward is not Fortune/The 19th*
ESG gains could buy better terms in insurance program WSJ
PARTING WORDS
"There’s a relief and a bit of a thrill in deep-diving into it."
-Sera Gamble, the showrunner of You on Netflix, on the feeling of inhabiting the mind of a misogynstic, "egotistical, self-centered, violating person"
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