Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made a surprise appearance at an Amazon fulfillment center and Whole Foods store on Wednesday. This comes after some warehouse employees in NYC held a walkout demanding more safety precautions amid the coronavirus. Yahoo Finance’s Sibile Marcellus joins Seana Smith to discuss.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: One stock that we are watching today is Amazon. And we're watching that after Jeff Bezos made a surprise visit to an Amazon warehouse and also to a Whole Foods store amid worker safety concerns.

Now warehouse workers and Whole Foods employees have called for the company to better protect their workers during the coronavirus outbreak. And you can remember some of the protesters, some of the walkouts that we saw staged over the last couple of weeks because of that.

Sibile Marcellus joins us now with more on this story. And Sibile, it's interesting just in terms of the video that Amazon tweeted out of Jeff Bezos walking through the warehouse and also through the Whole Foods store.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: That's right, Seana. So I was watching that video. Basically, Jeff Bezos visited an Amazon warehouse and a Whole Foods store yesterday. The company put that video on Twitter. And in that video, you see Jeff Bezos show up at the warehouse, get his temperature checked, he's wearing a face mask.

And he's walking around greeting employees, thanking them. He even says to one, I would shake your hand, but obviously, you can't do that right now. I can totally relate to that one. He also asked one of the Whole Foods workers who has this clear shield that separates him from shoppers how he feels about that.

So the seemingly impromptu visit is not out of the blue because Amazon has been facing a barrage of criticism, as you mentioned there, Seana, for not stepping up safety precautions for workers. In fact, last month, Jeff Bezos sent out a memo to employees, saying that there's no manual for a situation like this and that the coronavirus of pandemic is creating stress for everyone.

But that memo came a day after four senators asked Jeff Bezos to step up protections at warehouses. So what we've seen is that last week, there were walkouts at three Amazon warehouses in Staten Island, New York, in Detroit, and in Illinois. Also on Monday of this week, there was another walkout at the Staten Island warehouse because the employee who organized the protest was allegedly fired for organizing it.

Meanwhile, Amazon is saying, well, that's not why he was fired. He was fired because he was-- he violated social distancing guidelines. So what Amazon is doing right now, they're downplaying the walkouts, but they are stepping up safety measures, such as more intense cleaning at facilities. They're also requiring that workers clean and sanitize their stations at the beginning of a shift and the end of the shift. They're also taking worker temperatures and giving out facemasks.

SEANA SMITH: All right, Sibile, thank you.