Amazon Workers Find Long-Elusive Leverage in Coronavirus (1)

There are many reasons Tonya Ramsay might have just kept working. The 29-year-old, who works in the shipping department of an Amazon.com Inc. warehouse outside Detroit, pays the mortgage at the house where she lives with her boyfriend and 11-year-old son. But she was scared. Managers at the 855,000-square-foot facility where Ramsay works said two of her co-workers had been diagnosed with Covid-19. Ramsay suspected—correctly, it turns out—there were more cases to be identified.

Worried about their safety, Ramsay and a few dozen colleagues walked off the job on April 1. With some carrying signs, they stood—6 feet apart—on a ...