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End Worker Surveillance

October 16, 2020 Athena. , , ,
Today, workers are subjected to an unprecedented level of workplace surveillance and control. From voice monitoring to tracking applications, these systems are being introduced into workplaces that are already stacked against low-wage workers, creating an environment ripe for exploitation. Surveillance gives corporations more power over workers. When combined with automation that dictates the pace and type of work, it results in a more dangerous, punishing, and precarious workplace.

Amazon Expects Employees To Operate Like Fast-Moving Machines

October 9, 2020 Michelle Chen and Molly Crabapple, In These Times. , ,
For Sean Carlisle (a pseu­do­nym) a 32-year-old grad­u­ate stu­dent and native of California’s Inland Empire, the last three years at his local Ama­zon ful­fill­ment cen­ter have been an edu­ca­tion. As a stu­dent of urban plan­ning, he stud­ies how built envi­ron­ments shape a community’s behav­ior. As a pick­er, he packs items at a break­neck pace amid stacks of inven­to­ry and snaking con­vey­or belts while del­i­cate­ly prac­tic­ing strate­gies to raise his cowork­ers’ polit­i­cal consciousness.  Amazon’s logis­ti­cal infra­struc­ture is designed to make humans per­form with machine-like effi­cien­cy, but Sean is try­ing to make the work­place a bit more human, advo­cat­ing for stronger work­er pro­tec­tions and cor­po­rate account­abil­i­ty in his community.

Workers At Amazon Center In Minnesota Walk Out

October 4, 2020 Joey Peters, Sahan Journal. , ,
Minnesota - About two dozen Amazon employees in Shakopee walked off their jobs Thursday night to support a colleague whom they said was unjustly fired earlier this week. The former employee, Farhiyo Warsame, also showed up at the walkout as her colleagues chanted her name.  The employees chanted, clapped, and confronted a manager about Farhiyo’s termination for two hours, through chilly temperatures and darkness. As Farhiyo spoke to the crowd in front of the building, an operations manager with the company, flanked by a pair of other employees wearing neon vests, came out the front door.

Amazon Posted Job To Monitor Employee’s Efforts To Unionize

September 3, 2020 Aaron Holmes, Business Insider. , , ,
In a now-deleted job listing posted this week, Amazon advertised that it's looking to hire an "intelligence analyst" tasked with duties including snooping on workers' unionization efforts and reporting back to executives about their findings. It's a sign of Amazon's escalating fight to stop its workers from organizing. The company has previously turned to unorthodox methods to quash unionization — its subsidiary Whole Foods built a heat map tool specifically for tracking unionization threats, Business Insider reported in April.

Amazon Workers Blocked Delivery Trucks For Hours

August 5, 2020 Lauren Kaori Gurley, Vice. , , ,
Amazon warehouse workers shut down deliveries at an Amazon Distribution Center in the San Francisco Bay Area for several hours on Saturday, demanding the company implement more safety measures to protect workers against COVID-19 and increased pay to reflect the cost of living in one of the country’s most expensive metro areas. Early Saturday, a caravan of cars, organized by Bay Area Amazonians, an Amazon warehouse worker and delivery-driver led group, drove into the warehouse parking lot, blocking Amazon delivery vans from leaving the facility for roughly three hours and disrupting the flow of business, according to the protest’s organizers.

Amazon Taxed! Lessons Of The Tax Amazon Victory In Seattle

July 16, 2020 By Logan Swan, Socialist Alternative. , , ,
The Tax Amazon movement and Seattle’s working class won a historic victory on Monday, July 6. Following a three year struggle against the richest man in the world – Jeff Bezos – and his political establishment, we’ve won a tax on big business in the Seattle City Council that will raise an estimated $210-240 million a year, creating tens of thousands of green union jobs by building permanently affordable social housing. This victory was entirely due to the power of our movement and our threat to take the Amazon Tax to the ballot if the City Council failed to act. This offensive win is a historic example of the power of class struggle, and it could not come at a better time. Cities and states across the country are pushing extreme austerity budgets in response to the pandemic-triggered budget shortfalls as we enter into another deep crisis of capitalism.

Amazon Labor Activism Goes International

May 10, 2020 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. , , ,
Amazon worker organizing is going international. A new coalition of Amazon employee activists from Spain, France, German, Poland and America has announced itself with a list of demands for improved pay and safety—and they say that this is just the beginning. The new group, called Amazon Workers International (AWI), is a significant new formal attempt to combine the well-established labor activism of Amazon workers in Europe with the grassroots organizing that has targeted Amazon in America in recent months. The group’s letter, sent to CEO Jeff Bezos and Stefano Perego, the VP of Europe Customer Fulfillment, asks the company to lock in temporary gains that workers have made during the pandemic, and for broader improvements in Amazon’s historically poor relationship with its warehouse workers.

Longtime Amazon VP Explains Why He Quit Over Treatment Of Amazon Whistleblowers

May 6, 2020 Tim Bray. , ,
May 1st was my last day as a VP and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, after five years and five months of rewarding fun. I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19. What with big-tech salaries and share vestings, this will probably cost me over a million (pre-tax) dollars, not to mention the best job I’ve ever had, working with awfully good people. So I’m pretty blue. What happened · Last year, Amazonians on the tech side banded together as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ), first coming to the world’s notice with an open letter promoting a shareholders’ resolution calling for dramatic action and leadership from Amazon on the global climate emergency. I was one of its 8,702 signatories.

Liberating Logistics: All Power To The Frontline Workers

May 2, 2020 By Dave Braneck, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
This May Day, a broad coalition of workers from firms in the logistics sector ranging from Amazon and Walmart to Instacart and Wholefoods are staging a mass walkout. They are rising up on International Workers’ Day to demand improved health and safety on the job in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, where they have all too often been hung out to dry by employers and states. COVID-19’s grim spread has left few facets of global economic and social life untouched. The pandemic has forced us to view the old realities of life in a new light, in which the stark contrast between different conditions of labor have become glaringly apparent. While a privileged few can sit out the crisis working relatively uninterrupted from home, many more have seen their hours reduced or slashed by wary employers, or forced to work under dangerous conditions for low pay because their work has been deemed “essential” to society.

Across Class Lines: Amazon Tech Workers Join Warehouse Workers In Protests

May 2, 2020 Bryce Covert, Progress.org. , , ,
At first, Gerald Bryson didn’t take the coronavirus all that seriously. But then, people he knew started dying. “People I’ve known all my life, big healthy men three times my size, are dead,” he said. “This thing is real.” He assumed that Amazon, his employer, would take the necessary measures to keep him and his fellow Staten Island warehouse workers safe. Instead, safety precautions “were almost nonexistent,” Bryson said. “When the virus first hit, Amazon didn’t move into gear. We were still doing the same things we were doing on a normal day, crowded.” Eventually, Amazon informed his warehouse that a number of employees had tested positive. The company didn’t release any of the names, however, so it was impossible for Bryson to know whether he’d been exposed to the people who were sick. It scared him.

Amazon, Walmart, FedEx Workers Plan Walkout On Friday

April 30, 2020 Kaelan Deese, The Hill. , , ,
The Friday demonstrations will also request protective and cleaning equipment and full disclosure on the number of infected cases in company facilities. The protest would result in employees of the listed businesses calling in sick from work or stepping out during their lunch break. At the same time, some union members will reportedly join workers outside warehouses and storefronts in support of the strikes. "We are acting in conjunction with workers at Amazon, Target, Instacart, and other companies for International Worker's Day [May 1] to show solidarity with other essential workers," said Daniel Steinbrook, a Whole Foods employee and strike organizer. Smalls was fired by Amazon in March after organizing a walkout and has said he will take legal action against the company. 

‘Protect Amazon Workers’ Mural Painted In Front Of CEO Jeff Bezos’ Home

April 29, 2020 Shut Down DC, Popular Resistance , , ,
On April 29, 2020, a team of activists with La ColectiVA and ShutDownDC painted a mural on the street in front of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ DC home. The mural read “PROTECT AMAZON WORKERS” in massive letters stretching from curb to curb.  The mural action was taken in solidarity with Amazon workers across the country who are being forced to endanger their health during the COVID-19 crisis.  Advocates for healthy and safe working conditions in Amazon warehouses participated in an online town hall in which they called on Bezos to provide paid time off for illness, adequately clean warehouses, and end attacks on worker organizing. They were joined by environmental justice and racial justice activists. “Whether it’s harming our environment or enabling ICE and police surveillance, corporations like Amazon are complicit in profiteering from practices that put us all, especially Black and brown communities, at risk...”

Fired Amazon Worker Chris Smalls: Support May Day Strikers

April 29, 2020 Jaisal Noor, The Real News. , , ,
Another reason why we out here tonight is because Amazon is targeting specific people. We are being told to stay six feet apart. However, that rule does not apply for everyone. We’ve seen management do it right in front of us. We’ve seen safety that are supposed to keep us safe, do it. Yet we as associates are being targeted. Jaisal Noor: That’s Hofsa Hassan, one of the dozens of Amazon workers who staged a walkout to protest unsafe working conditions and the loss of hazard pay at an Amazon warehouse in Shakopee, Minnesota on April 26th. We can expect to see more walkouts and protests leading up to big actions on Mayday or International Workers Day, which is observed in most countries except the United States. Despite its rich militant often bloody history of working class struggle that’s secured major victories like the eight hour workday.

Amazon Will Not Change Without A Union

April 28, 2020 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. , ,
Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Jeff Bezos has gotten $24 billion richer. Amazon’s stock price has risen more than 40% since mid-March. This explosive creation of corporate wealth has coincided with an unprecedented level of labor activism against Amazon, including multiple well-publicized workplace walkouts, protests, and a growing drumbeat of negative PR about the company’s handling of the pandemic, particularly regarding the workplace safety of warehouse workers. There has never been as much coordinated labor action against Amazon. And Amazon has never been more successful. If the goal is to truly change Amazon, it’s time to make the strategy sharper. Yes, Amazon is a behemoth. It is not just a trillion-dollar company run by the world’s richest man; it is a machine that is slowly eradicating the traditional retail industry in America and changing the entire landscape of work.

Amazon Workers Walk Out Over COVID-19 Outbreak

April 26, 2020 Atwood Center, Facebook. , , , ,
Breaking: 50+ workers WALKED OUT at the Shakopee Amazon warehouse overnight after management revealed two more cases of COVID-19 and unjustly fired another worker leader. Faiza Osman has been a dedicated worker at Amazon for nearly three years, and was terminated for staying home with her two children during the pandemic. Amazon leadership had informed workers to stay home if they felt that they needed the time off, yet they fired Osman evidently for doing what she was allowed to do. This followed the firing of multiple Amazon leaders at the Shakopee warehouse. Workers believe that Amazon is using its six-foot social distancing policy to retaliate against workers. Amazon recently announced it would take away unlimited unpaid time off effective May 1st.
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