Skip to content

Amazon

Wage Gains At UPS Have Amazon Workers Demanding More

August 5, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
Amazon warehouse worker Paul Blundell has spent the past year talking to his co-workers about how UPS Teamsters were getting organized to strike. So recently, he had big news to share: “A few days before the strike deadline, UPS caved.” “Everybody’s jaw dropped” when they heard that night shift workers at the Philly UPS air hub will get an immediate raise to $24.75, Blundell said. “We top out around $20.90 after three years, so UPS is now starting well above that—with raises for the rest of the contract.” UPS part-timers also have low-deductible health insurance coverage with no premiums, and pensions.

Striking Amazon Drivers Extend Picket Lines To Atlanta, Georgia

July 30, 2023 Bill Aiman, Fight Back News!. , , , ,
Atlanta, Georgia – On July 26 Amazon workers and community members picketed ATL 6, the Atlanta Amazon Sortation Center. The Amazon drivers in Palmdale, CA extended picket lines to Atlanta as part of their unfair labor practice (ULP) strike against Amazon. The Palmdale Amazon Drivers voted to join Teamsters Local 396 earlier this year and ratified a contract shortly thereafter. Amazon responded to the workers forming a union by retaliating and terminating the newly organized drivers. As a result, the Drivers began their ULP strike. “We’ve currently been on strike for over a month now since they cut our contract early because we unionized with the Teamsters,” said Jessie Moreno, one of the Palmdale Amazon drivers.

Chasing Clicks Through Ad Money, Media Does PR For Amazon

July 24, 2023 Adam Johnson, The Real News Network. , , ,
Every year, America’s corporate media celebrates the coming of that most sacred and deal-laden of holidays, so-called Amazon “Prime Day.”  The media fanfare around Prime Day is such a staple that it has become a perennial strategic rallying point for Amazon workers trying to draw attention to Amazon’s low wages, unsafe working conditions, and aggressive anti-union corporate culture. These are year-round problems that ramp up to 11 during the taxing and brutal period before, during, and after Prime Day, when workers are pressured into long hours, exposed to high temperatures, and given impossible performance metrics to hit.

Michigan Amazon Workers Stage Largest Delivery Station Strike Yet

July 18, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , ,
In the middle of Amazon’s Prime Day promotional sales rush, 60 warehouse workers walked out for more than three hours at its delivery station in Pontiac, Michigan—bringing the facility to the brink of a total shutdown. A delivery station is the last warehouse an Amazon package passes through before it is loaded into a truck or van en route to the customer. This year’s “Prime Day” shopping bonanza July 11 and 12 set a record for the largest sales day in Amazon’s history. The crush of Prime Day puts even more pressure on workers to keep up with conveyor belts overflowing with boxes that can weigh as much as 50 pounds.

Amazon Teamsters’ Rolling Pickets Hit Facilities Nationwide

July 14, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Brandi Diaz was at a customer’s door in Palmdale, California, delivering stuff for Amazon, when the customer asked her, “What’s the difference between you and UPS drivers?” “He said the difference is UPS is union, Amazon is not. He referred to us as ‘Jeff’s Bozos.’ “I am no longer Bezos’ Bozo!” Diaz said over honks and chants from 200 Teamsters from six different locals and some labor allies at a picket line outside an Amazon warehouse in northern New Jersey July 6. Diaz and her co-workers voted to join Teamsters Local 396 in April. They are Amazon delivery drivers, but they were nominally employed by an Amazon contractor, the Southern California company Battle-Tested Strategies.

California Amazon Strikers, Allies Blockade Massachusetts Warehouse

July 12, 2023 Steve Gillis, Workers World. , , , , ,
Norwood, Massachusetts - With military-like tactics and discipline, over 300 Teamsters and their supporters converged in the predawn darkness on a sprawling Amazon warehouse (DCB4) and truck barn in the Boston suburb of Norwood on July 8. At exactly 4 a.m., contingents of workers moved out of the shadows of wooded side streets and, with bullhorns blaring, blocked off multiple gates with moving pickets. Picketing was led by two striking Amazon delivery drivers — Cecilia Porter and Brandi Diaz — who had flown in from Palmdale, California.

Reform Caucus Rises, Sues For Elections In Amazon Labor Union

July 11, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
One year after the landmark union victory at the Amazon warehouse JFK8 on Staten Island, New York, the brightly colored posters that once adorned the glass at the iconic bus stop in front of the plant are gone. This was the bus stop from which Chris Smalls, Derrick Palmer, Connor Spence, Gerald Bryson, Jordan Flowers, and others launched an insurrection that won an unprecedented union authorization election at the 8,000-worker warehouse. The posters have been replaced by a torn letter dated January 17, 2023, asking the company’s lawyers to begin bargaining and recognize the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) as the exclusive bargaining agent.

Teamsters Picket Fourth California Warehouse In Expanding Amazon Strike

July 3, 2023 International Brotherhood of Teamsters. , , , , ,
San Bernardino, California - Striking Amazon delivery drivers and dispatchers from Palmdale, Calif., extended their picket line to an Amazon warehouse in San Bernardino, Calif. (ONT5) today, to demand the e-commerce giant stop its unfair labor practices. The growing strike will continue until Amazon reinstates the unlawfully terminated employees, recognizes the Teamsters, respects the contract negotiated by the workers, and bargains with the Teamsters Union to address low pay and dangerous working conditions. “I work for one of the richest companies in the world, but the pay is so low that I have to work two other jobs as well to provide for my kids,” said Jovana Figueroa, a striking Amazon driver.

Amazon’s Tight Grip On Cloud Computing Poses Multiple Threats

July 3, 2023 Ron Knox and Stacy Mitchell, Institute for Local Self-Reliance. , , , ,
Cloud infrastructure and services are the backbone of the modern economy. The world’s biggest companies, including many banks, hospitals, streaming services, consumer goods companies and far more, all store troves of data in the cloud and rely on cloud applications and services to operate. In light of this essential role, ILSR is deeply concerned about high levels of concentration in cloud computing and the ability of the sector’s dominant firms, led by Amazon, to exploit their control over this infrastructure and the data they glean from it. In a comment letter to the Federal Trade Commission, ILSR urged the agency to use its enforcement and regulatory powers to address the anti-competitive conduct of Amazon’s cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services.

Lula To Launch Social Programs; Part Of Stopping Amazon Deforestation

June 11, 2023 Resumen English. , , , ,
The government of leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will launch a social program with economic aid to vulnerable families working in the conservation of the Amazon rainforest that is a similar program that was repealed by the previous president, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022). The program, called ‘Bolsa Verde’, an environmental version of the popular ‘Bolsa Familia’, will be implemented in 30,000 families in the Brazilian Amazon, but the government’s intention is to expand it to other biomes, such as the Cerrado (the Brazilian savannah) or the Atlantic Forest, all threatened by deforestation and other environmental crimes.

How Some Amazon Shareholders Allied With The Labour Movement

May 29, 2023 Gabriela Calugay-Casuga, Rabble.ca. , , , ,
During Amazon’s annual general meeting on May 24, a proposal for an independent audit on working conditions in Amazon warehouses did not pass. This was unsurprising after Amazon’s Board of Directors advised their shareholders to vote against the proposal ahead of the meeting. The Board of Directors recommended against passing the proposal because they claim that the company regularly enhances safety processes and programs, they have shared workforce incident rates, they are transparent about their commitment to improve workplace safety and because there are already “independent directors” who review workplace incidents.

Organizing Despite The Churn

May 23, 2023 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. , , ,
When the Amazon Labor Union first submitted union authorization cards, “we had to withdraw and file again,” recalled organizing committee member Justine Medina, “because Amazon challenged over 1,000 of our signatures saying they no longer worked there.” The sky-high turnover at the 8,000-worker fulfillment center on New York's Staten Island, made collecting cards “a race against Amazon firing everyone,” she said. Amazon has annual turnover of 150 percent. “They design the productivity quota, the rates system, to be a constant speedup situation, and that makes it hard to keep the job,” said Medina, who still works at the warehouse. Several ALU leaders have been fired.

Can Labor Seize Its ‘Movement Moment’?

April 14, 2023 Rand Wilson and Peter Olney, Stansbury Forum. , , ,
One measure of the labor movement’s relative power is the percentage of the workforce covered by union contracts. From a post-war high in 1955 of 35% in the private sector represented by unions, the percentage has steadily plunged—now to a low of only 6% . That low private sector number is buoyed to just over 10% by the higher percentage of unionized public sector workers. These dismal membership numbers hide the promise this moment holds for union organizing. Public support, resources, and organizing momentum point to some of the brightest possibilities for the US union movement in decades.

The Undercover Organizers Behind America’s Union Wins

April 5, 2023 Josh Eidelson, Portside. , , , ,
If you want to unionize a workplace, Will Westlake was saying, get used to unclogging the drains. At a secret off-hours gathering held in Rochester, New York, in March, the 25-year-old former barista told a few dozen labor activists that a great way to build trust with co-workers and bosses is to volunteer for thankless chores. In his case, that meant spending months at a Starbucks outside Buffalo in 2021 getting on his knees and reaching beneath the sinks to yank loose the grimy mix of mocha chips, espresso beans, congealed milk and rotten fruit that regularly stopped things up. “Be the person who’s willing,” Westlake said. “It’s going to make the company less suspicious of you.”

Filings Reveal Amazon Spent Over $14 Million To Bust Union In 2022 Alone

April 4, 2023 Sharon Zhang, Truthout. , , ,
As Amazon Labor Union’s groundbreaking labor movement gained momentum — and, in some ways, faltered — in 2022, Amazon was busy shelling out millions of dollars to anti-union consultants in order to ensure that the union movement would fail, new filings show. As first reported by HuffPost, new financial disclosures filed on Friday with the Department of Labor show that Amazon spent $14.2 million on anti-union consultants. These consultants are hired by companies seeking to bust union efforts, advising them on ways to skirt or violate federal laws in order to crush labor organizing.
«12345678910»
assetto corsa mods

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.