JOLIET —A former employee at the Joliet Amazon fulfillment is not walking away from his former job quietly. Robert Chura retained a downtown Joliet law firm to file a Will County lawsuit against Amazon.Com Services. Chura contends he was fired last year after being told “to stay in his lane” after seeing other employees stealing high-volume merchandise or falsifying their hours of work.
According to his lawsuit, Chura resides in Will County, and he began working at the Joliet fulfillment center for Amazon in December 2021. He was a warehouse associate. In July 2022, Chura was promoted to process assistant and that October, he was promoted again, this time to loss prevention specialist. Then in December 2022, Chura reported an assault involving several Amazon employees to loss prevention manager Joe Byrne and “Mr. Byrne replied that Robert should mind his business,” the lawsuit noted.
Chura, however, chose to continue investigating the assault because it involved a pregnant woman who was not an Amazon employee, the lawsuit contends.
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“Robert witnessed certain Amazon employees allowing other Amazon employees to enter/exit through emergency exits so that those Amazon employees did not have to go through security and scan their badges. This meant those Amazon employees were outside of the building yet remained on the clock and presumed to be working therefore collecting a paycheck for hours they were not working, aka, theft of time/wages,” Chura’s lawsuit argues.
In another instance, around mid-January 2023, Chura alerted Joe Byrne to the theft of several cameras, lenses, iPads, Air Pods, Nintendo Switch games, other electronics and clothes; items that contained a total value of over $100,000.
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“Byrne got angry at Robert and replied it was none of Robert’s concern and once again that he was to ‘stay in his lane,'” the lawsuit states.
In the coming days, Chura was given a new loss prevention manager, Max Grady, and when Chura told Grady about the high-dollar amount of thefts “Grady replied with a thinly veiled threat of assault and physical violence stating that he was a martial arts black belt and that Robert ‘best keep his mouth shut,'” court documents outlined.
According to the lawsuit, Chura notified Amazon HR senior investigator Farae Wolfe of an Amazon warehouse worker at work with several iPads and asking people who wanted to buy one. “Robert also informed Mr. Wolfe that LP Manager Andrew Wanner told Robert that he planned on using the company credit card to drink and smoke pot at a local hotel bar, i.e., theft,” court records reflect.
In February 2023, three Amazon employees walked into the HR commons area and Grady declared, “He’s a psycho. He’s a psycho,” referring to the plaintiff, his lawsuit noted.
On March 15, 2023, Chura performed a security check audit regarding how often the Securitas checks bags passed through the X-Ray machines along with any other abnormal activity in the building, and “during his audit, Robert observed tape showing more than 12 workers exit the building after completing their work shifts without placing their bags on the scanner,” the lawsuit noted.
Then, on March 31, 2023, Chura was notified while he was not at work that, “your services are no longer needed at Amazon.
According to his lawsuit, “to the extent Amazon fired Robert for not placing his backpack through the X-Ray machine when he exited the work area on March 15, 2023, or any other day, to go to the breakroom and get ice, such a claimed explanation is pretextual for several reasons including that many employees do not place their backpacks, purses, etc. through security and they exit the work area … Amazon HR has access to and can review videotapes of the area at any time to see many other workers doing what it claims prompted it to fire Robert.”
Chura’s lawsuit was filed by downtown Joliet attorney Timothy Coffey of The Coffey Law Office. The lawsuit seeks a judgment against Amazon for more than $50,000 and “order defendant to make Robert whole by paying him appropriate back pay, Social Security and other benefits and out of pocket expenses, plus pre-judgment interest in an amount to be shown at trial.”
And that’s not all.
The plaintiffs also want Will County’s judiciary to “order defendant to immediately reinstate Robert to his former position, or, in the alternative, order defendant to pay Robert an appropriate amount of front pay.”
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