OC Pregnant Mom Vs. Amazon: 'Told To Do Yoga' & Stay At Work

ORANGE COUNTY, CA —A Santa Ana mother and former Amazon Fresh HR employee testified Wednesday that she was harassed at the Vernon Amazon Fresh facility while trying to do her work. Thu Nguyet Thi "Nicki" Tran told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury that her hopes to have a long career at the e-commerce giant were dashed after she became pregnant with her first child in 2017.

During the court session, Tran described her supervisor, Adam Kozinn, and the Amazon Fresh site leader, Kuldip Sandhu, as "cool to her" when she requested accommodations to cope with nausea from morning sickness.

They stopped being receptive when she sought further coaching to do a better job, she told those present.

Tran, who is now pregnant with her third child, said she was reluctant to complain to someone with higher authority than Kozinn and Sandhu, that she didn't want to be perceived as "just a complainer."

"I had a job and I wanted to keep a job," Tran said.

Amazon attorneys painted a different picture, saying that she just did not appear at work on multiple occaisions, unexcused.

They argued in court documents that a mere three months after beginning her job at the Vernon facility, Tran "systematically chose not to come in to her worksite for at least 20 days over a six-month period without taking any time off, without getting permission and usually without even telling her boss or her co-workers that she would not be present."

When Tran was told an investigation would be conducted into her conduct, she at first asked for a severance, then rejected it, chose not to return to work and then sued in March 2018, according to the defense attorneys' court papers.

Tran was reportedly fired in September 2017, she alleges "just days before she was scheduled to take maternity leave." She says that she found it hard to drive from Orange County to Vernon every day because of nausea so bad she often felt like vomiting in the car.

"It's called morning sickness, but it's not just in the morning," Tran said.

She also said her back pain while sitting in the car worsened during her second trimester.

According to Tran's testimony, Kozinn was initially receptive to her working from home, where she said she could do the same work from her laptop that she normally did at the office, other than in-person meetings with employees.

She also said Amazon had communications systems that made it easy for her to be in contact with employees and help them while working remotely.

But when Sandhu came back from a six-month leave, though she had no issue with Tran's pregnancy she brushed off Tran's complaints of nausea, saying "be positive and you'll be fine" and suggesting the plaintiff take yoga classes, Tran said.

Sandhu also became frustrated about Tran's medical appointments, the plaintiff said.

"I wanted to be available, but because of the pregnancy I couldn't sometimes," Tran said. "I felt incompetent."

Kozinn's attitude also changed and he seemed unwilling to coach the plaintiff so she could have a better working relationship with Sandhu, Tran said.

While walking together around the fast-paced facility one day, Kozinn turned and asked the pregnant Tran, "Do I need to slow down for you?" Tran testified.

Kozinn also told her she was not ready for any promotions and questioned whether she was legally entitled to the amount of maternity leave she was requesting, Tran said.

Tran is a Vietnamese immigrant who says that her family waited more than a dozen years before they could come to the U.S.

They were ultimately sponsored by a relative who preceded them years earlier after the end of the Vietnam War. She said she was happy about her new homeland because of the limited job opportunities in her native country, especially for women.

Tran, fluent only in Vietnamese when she came to the U.S., said she "forced herself" to learn English, attended community college and eventually graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in human resources, hoping to one day be a career recruiter.

She said she herself was recruited at Amazon.com in 2014 from her job as a human resources assistant at Western Dental.

City News Service contributed to this report.