“We wanna thank Jeff Bezos, cause while he was up in space we was signing people up,” Chris Smalls, who led the unionization effort, said when asked what he would say to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Read more:
At Amazon’s Staten Island complex — which includes four similar warehouses — this month’s vote is just the start. Another 1,500 workers at a warehouse directly across the street from JFK8, called LDJ5, will be eligible to vote in a union drive scheduled for April 25th. All told the company says more than 10,000 employees work at the Staten Island compound, and organizers want to unionize them all.
Workers at the sprawling warehouse JFK8 sort, load and unload items to be dispatched to Amazon customers across the region. They often work nearly 12 hours shifts with two 30 minute breaks, or sometimes a 45-minute break depending on the shift, which workers say is barely enough time to make your way across the warehouse and eat. Workers movements and productivity is meticulously tracked by the company and people are targeted with write ups who can’t keep up, workers say.
Amazon Labor Union organizers campaigned on a pledge to fight for higher starting wages. They’re aiming for $30 an hour from the current starting rate of $18.25. They want job security to prevent the company from constantly firing and rehiring people several months later. They’re also pushing for quality of life improvements for workers, like allowing workers to keep their phones on the warehouse floor and pushing the company to provide shuttle buses for workers with long commutes.
“Get it out, get it out, get it out, get it out. That's the way it is every day,” said Meena Shuler, who’d been first in line as the polls opened on March 25 outside the warehouse, explaining why she’d voted in support of the Amazon Labor Union. That pressure was kicked into overdrive during the pandemic, while workers weren’t given access to personal protective gear and were getting sick in droves, she said.
The Amazon Labor Union is made up of current and former employees and is not affiliated with any major union,
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