Amazon.com Inc said on Tuesday that it supports a bill that would legalise cannabis on a federal level in the United States and that it would eliminate weed-testing conditions for certain job applicants.
According to its consumer manager Dave Clark, the e-commerce company’s public policy team will be strongly promoting The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2021 (MORE Act), which aims to legalise marijuana at the federal level. For all jobs not governed by the Department of Transportation, Amazon will no longer test work applicants for marijuana use.
Despite the fact that many states have legalised marijuana, employers have still declined to collaborate with the industry because cannabis is still listed as a controlled substance under federal law. “In the past, we’ve prohibited people from working at Amazon if they tested positive for drug use, much like many other employers,” Clark said.
According to a Westlaw study, Amazon was hit with a pending class action lawsuit alleging that the corporation was breaking a New York City law by checking candidates for work at local facilities for marijuana. On its website, the company does not allow marijuana sales.
“Time off Task,” Amazon’s worker efficiency monitoring tool, is also being tweaked. “We’re now averaging Time off Task over a longer period of time, starting today, to ensure that there’s more signal and less noise—reinforcing the program’s original purpose,” Clark said.
