Amazon

Communities Should Not Pay Amazon

March 19, 2022 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Educate! Amazon, Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, Taxes

It’s meaningful that Amazon‘s head, Jeff Bezos, also owns the Washington Post, and that the paper sometimes needs to be reminded to disclose that relationship to readers, as they run stories like “Jeff Bezos Blasts Into Space on Own Rocket: ‘Best Day Ever!’”—buttressed by op-eds like “The Billionaires’ Space Efforts May Seem Tone-Deaf, but They’re Important Milestones.” The difficult reality is that Bezos doesn’t need to outright own a news outlet to get coverage that undergirds his worldview that, yes, it makes sense for a man to launch himself into space while some of his employees rely on public assistance to feed themselves, and face every underhanded obstacle if they try to organize, and for a company that contains those contradictions to be labeled a wild economic success.

The Amazon Warehouse Walkout Is Just The Latest Push

March 18, 2022 Caitlin Harrington, Wired. Resist! Amazon, Unions, Walkout, Worker Rights and Jobs

In the predawn hours of Wednesday morning, workers at three Amazon warehouses walked off the job. More than 60 employees at two delivery stations in Queens, New York, and one in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC coordinated the first multistate walkout at US Amazon warehouses and demanded a $3 hourly raise. As high-profile union elections in Bessemer, Alabama, and Staten Island, New York, have captured the world’s attention, an informal union named Amazonians United (AU) has been staging actions at facilities across the country—and winning. The worker-led organization began when a handful of Chicago warehouse workers got together in 2019 to protest the company limiting their water access, according to an interview in Jacobin.

Amazon Union Organizers Arrested After Bringing Food To Workers

February 24, 2022 Murjani Rawls, The Root. Resist! Amazon, New York City (NYC), Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

The Biden administration has recently made proposals to strengthen unions–one suggestion includes limiting “barriers to union organizers being able to talk with employees on federal property about the benefits of organizing a union.” However, there’s the issue of what can happen on private property. Amazon has taken a firm anti-union stance and continues that streak with a new development. According to Business Insider, the NYPD arrested three union organizers at Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island. This is not the first time police have been called on this particular warehouse. Insider also reported an incident involving a small open-sided tent pitched across the street of the warehouse in November. Police ordered that the tent be taken down and one organizer was handcuffed and temporarily held in a jail cell.

Workers Power Day – February 26, 2022

February 8, 2022 Support Amazon Workers. Resist! Amazon, Starbucks, Trayvon Martin, Worker Rights and Jobs

Starbucks workers are leading an electrifying drive to organize the major coffee chain, with one or often several stores announcing they’re joining this growing movement each day. Amazon workers from coast to coast are organizing to build power at one of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations. Workers in Staten Island recently filed to hold union elections at 2 warehouses. The majority Black Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama are engaged in their second union campaign, after the results of the first were tossed out based on Amazon’s egregious union busting campaign – which they continue in earnest in Bessemer, Staten Island, and elsewhere.

After Amazon Tragedy, Workers Demand Safe Working Conditions

February 7, 2022 Rebekah Entralgo, Inequality.org. Resist! Amazon, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Worker Rights

The fight for justice and accountability continues for six Amazon employees who were killed when a warehouse roof collapsed during a tornado in December. Federal officials are investigating possible health and safety violations at the facility in Edwardsville, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis. Illinois lawmakers are considering raising statewide standards for warehouse construction to prevent future tragedies. And family members of one of the employees, Austin McEwen, recently filed a wrongful death suit against the giant retailer. “My daughter was not expendable,” said Jeffrey Hebb at a January rally in front of the Edwardsville facility. Hebb’s daughter, 34-year-old Etheria Hebb, died in the warehouse collapse, leaving behind a one-year-old daughter.

Alabama Amazon Workers Are About To Rerun Their Union Election

January 24, 2022 Alex N. Press, Jacobin. Organize! Alabama, Amazon, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It’s a moment of increased bargaining power for the US working class. Workers on the order of millions are quitting their jobs and finding new ones that will pay them better. Those with unions are more willing to fight to begin undoing prior concessions, their confidence bolstered by the realization that employers will have more trouble than usual replacing them should they strike; that these fights do not approach the level of struggle of the 1970s, much less the 1930s, do not make them insignificant. And the momentum is with reformers within unions: see recent efforts to transform the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters, two still mighty organizations even after sustained and systematic decline.

Amazon Unionization Efforts Get A Boost Under A Settlement With NLRB

December 27, 2021 Associated Press, Reader Supported News. Organize! Amazon, NLRB, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

According to the settlement, the online behemoth Amazon said it would reach out to its warehouse workers — former and current — via email who were on the job anytime from March 22 to now to notify them of their organizing rights. The settlement outlines that Amazon workers, which number 750,000 in the U.S., have more room to organize within the buildings. For example, Amazon pledged it will not threaten workers with discipline or call the police when they are engaging in union activity in exterior non-work areas during non-work time. According to the terms of the settlement, the labor board will be able to more easily sue Amazon— without going through a laborious process of administrative hearings — if it found that the online company reneged on its agreement.

Amazon Warehouse Workers Walk Off The Job In Illinois

December 24, 2021 Jeff Schuhrke, In These Times. Resist! Amazon, Illinois, Walkout, Worker Rights

On Wednesday morning, several dozen Amazon workers at two separate Chicago-area delivery stations staged a walkout to demand raises and safer working conditions, making it the first time the tech giant has seen a multi-site work stoppage in the United States. Coming just three days before Christmas to ensure maximum impact, the action caps a year of intense organizing and protest by Amazon warehouse workers who have been on the frontlines of both the Covid-19 pandemic and extreme weather events. Organized by the labor network Amazonians United, the walkouts occurred during the morning shifts at the company’s DIL3 facility in Chicago’s Gage Park neighborhood and at the DLN2 warehouse in the nearby town of Cicero.

Unions, Workers Call Out Backroom Deal To Sneak Amazon Into Airport

December 20, 2021 Joe Maniscalco, Labor Press. Resist! Amazon, Protests, Worker Rights and Jobs

The Teamsters, along with RDWSU and other worker advocacy groups belonging to the coalition calling on New York State Governor Kathy Hochul to back new anti-trust legislation pending in the Legislature, rallied outside the Amazon Go outlet at the corner of Church and Cortland streets in Manhattan this week, before marching over to the Port Authority offices where the agency was busy behind closed doors planning a new regional hub for Amazon at Newark Airport.

Amazon Workers Are Organizing For Cellphone Access

December 20, 2021 Lauren Kaori Gurley, Vice. Resist! Amazon, Worker Rights and Jobs

Hundreds of Amazon employees at warehouses across the mid-Atlantic are organizing to push the company to allow workers to keep their phones with them throughout their shifts and adopt an inclement weather policy in the aftermath of the collapse of the Amazon warehouse in Illinois that killed six workers. The Amazon workers are demanding that Amazon pay workers for shifts cancelled due to inclement weather. And during school closures, they want Amazon to excuse all absences caused by severe weather and to be paid 80 percent of their salary.

Labor Activists Want To Know Why Workers Were Left To Die

December 16, 2021 Jeff Schuhrke , In These Times. Educate! Amazon, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Worker Rights and Jobs

In the aftermath of a rare string of December tornadoes last Friday night that left 80 people dead across six states, labor activists are questioning why employees at two large worksites in the path of destruction were left exposed to danger. A candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky was totally destroyed after sustaining a direct tornado hit with 110 workers inside. At least eight people died and dozens more were severely injured. At the same time, an Amazon delivery station in Edwardsville, Illinois was also hit by a tornado during a shift change, causing the roof to fly off and part of an exterior wall to collapse, killing six workers ranging in age from 26 to 62. As search-and-rescue teams sifted through the rubble the next morning, Amazon founder and world’s second-richest person Jeff Bezos was celebrating another successful rocket launch by his private spaceflight company Blue Origin.

Amazon Under Fire After Warehouse Collapse Kills At Least Six People

December 14, 2021 Andrea Germanos, Commondreams. Educate! Amazon, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Worker Rights and Jobs

Amazon was accused Saturday of putting corporate profits above worker safety following the tornado-caused partial collapse of a St. Louis-area warehouse that left at least six people dead. “Time and time again Amazon puts its bottom line above the lives of its employees,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), in a statement. “Requiring workers to work through such a major tornado warning event as this was inexcusable.” Appelbaum’s remarks came after an outbreak of over 20 devastating tornadoes late Friday tore through multiple states and killed dozens of people. In addition to Illinois, affected states included Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee.

Why Unionizing Efforts Terrify Amazon

December 5, 2021 Sonali Kolhatkar, LA Progressive. Organize! Amazon, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has just ruled that a historic union vote held earlier this year among Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) was not valid. The highly publicized vote, which took place over several weeks in February and March 2021, resulted in a resounding defeat for the union, with more than 70 percent of those voting choosing against union membership. Stuart Appelbaum, president of RWDSU, accused Amazon of engaging in “efforts to gaslight its own employees,” and filed a petition in April to nullify the vote. After investigating the union’s assertion, the NLRB decided that Amazon interfered so blatantly in its workers’ ability to vote that a second election is now in order.

What Can Organizers At Amazon Learn From Walmart? Part 2

December 5, 2021 Alex Han, Organizing Upgrade. Organize! Amazon, Unions, Walmart, Worker Rights and Jobs

“Amazon is the epoch-defining corporation of the moment in a way that Walmart was two decades ago,” said Howard W, an Amazon warehouse worker and organizer with Amazonians United, a grassroots movement of Amazon workers building shop-floor power. What can organizers at Amazon learn from the Walmart campaigns in the 2000s? And what can these two efforts teach us about organizing at scale? Unions haven’t successfully organized an employer with more than 10,000 workers in decades, so getting to scale is one of the most pressing challenges for the social justice movements.

What Can Organizers At Amazon Learn From Walmart?

December 4, 2021 Alex Han, Organizing Upgrade. Organize! Amazon, Walkouts, Walmart, Worker Rights and Jobs

Amazon is the epoch-defining corporation of the moment in a way that Walmart was two decades ago,” said Howard W, an Amazon warehouse worker and organizer with Amazonians United, a grassroots movement of Amazon workers building shop-floor power. What can organizers at Amazon learn from the Walmart campaigns in the 2000s? And what can these two efforts teach us about organizing at scale? Unions haven’t successfully organized an employer with more than 10,000 workers in decades, so getting to scale is one of the most pressing challenges for the social justice movements. To explore these questions, Howard was joined by Wade Rathke, who, as chief organizer of ACORN in the U.S. from 1970 – 2008, anchored a collaboration among ACORN, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) that aimed to organize Walmart.

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