Julia Cheiffetz says she was pushed from Amazon after cancer surgery and maternity leave

A SENIOR book editor at Amazon had a baby and then discovered she had cancer. She thought her employer would support her, but she was wrong.

This could be the worst Amazon story yet

WHEN a senior book editor at Amazon had a baby and then discovered she had cancer, she thought her employer would support her.

Instead, she was about to experience the worst example of the company’s “bruising” culture, which was laid bare in 100 shocking testimonies by former employees in a recent New York Times expose.

Julia Cheiffetz, now executive editor at HarperCollins Publishers, went on maternity leave in 2013, two years into her employment as editorial director at Amazon. Six weeks after her daughter was born, she was diagnosed with cancer.

“There I was, soothing my infant, unsure of whether or not I would be around to see her first birthday,” she wrote on blogging platform Medium.

She had to go into surgery just a few months into her maternity leave and had to “pump and dump” her breast milk for 24 hours prior to surgery to prevent her daughter from ingesting radioactive matter.

That was when she received a letter saying the health insurance provided by her employer had been terminated. The distressed new mum sent “dozens of panicked emails” and made phone calls, and was told it had been an administrative error.

Julia Cheiffetz resigned from Amazon after her staff were given a new manager.

Jeff Bezos denies Amazon is a “bruising” place to work.

Eventually, she was offered COBRA coverage, which is generally used for former employees or spouses, and typically means the individual pays the premium instead of the employer. Luckily, by this point Ms Cheiffetz had been able to switch her husband’s insurance, and she remained there for the duration of her care.

Ms Cheiffetz wasn’t a top manager at the commerce giant for nothing. She was back in the office after just five months leave and, despite her ordeal, brushed off the insurance issue as a “horrendous administrative error”.

She was excited, looking forward to a “high-level update” on the business and its evolving strategy — as well as showing off a few baby photos.

Instead, she was taken to lunch by a woman she hardly knew, who explained that all but one of the people she had hired and managed were now reporting to her instead.

Over the following months, she was placed on a “performance improvement plan”, or PIP, which many say is Amazon code for telling employees they could be fired. Shortly afterwards, Ms Cheiffetz resigned.

She isn’t the only employee with cancer who has reported this kind of treatment. A woman who had breast cancer told the Times she too was put on a PIP, because “difficulties” in her “personal life” had interfered with fulfilling her work goals.

Julia Cheiffetz questioned the company’s commitment to diversity.

A woman who had thyroid cancer also received a low performance rating after returning from treatment, according to Times. An employee who miscarried twins and went on a business trip the day after she had surgery told the newspaper her boss said: “From where you are in life, trying to start a family, I don’t know if this is the right place for you.”

If the expectation really is the 80-hour week, backstabbing of colleagues and punishing targets described by the former staff, that’s little surprise.

When Ms Cheiffetz read the stories of others like her, she sat down and cried.

She said she felt compelled to share what happened to her because so many of the voices disagreeing with the Times article were male leaders of male-dominated teams.

She issued a direct plea to CEO Jeff Bezos — who has denied the accusations he runs a brutal workplace — that Amazon become a more hospitable place for women and parents.

“Re-evaluate your parental leave policies,” she said. “You can’t claim to be a data-driven company and not release more specific numbers on how many women and people of colour apply, get hired and promoted, and stay on as employees.”

While Amazon employs many people from ethnic minority groups in low-skilled jobs, just 10 per cent of staff in executive or technical jobs are black or Hispanic.

Now 36, Ms Cheiffetz says she worked with some of the “strongest, most brilliant” women of her career at Amazon — and many of them left. She says she quickly noted that almost all leadership positions were held by men.

“Who’s our Sheryl Sandberg?” she asked a colleague early on in her three years there.

He named general counsel Michelle Wilson, the sole woman on Mr Bezos’s executive team.

The following year, 2012, Ms Wilson left the company to take maternity leave. She never returned.

Mr Bezos has said he would resign if working at Amazon was as awful as the New York Times exposé suggested.

He emailed staffed saying the article “claims that our intentional approach is to create a soulless, dystopian workplace where no fun is had and no laughter heard. Again, I don’t recognise this Amazon and I very much hope you don’t, either.”

Mr Bezos has not, however, responded to Ms Cheiffetz’s claims. News.com.au has contacted the company for comment.