New York workers at Amazon’s Staten Island fulfillment center have publicly launched a campaign to unionize. Employees backing the union have come forward with many concerns about wages and work conditions. These include safety issues, inadequate pay, grueling 12-hour shifts with unreasonable hourly quotas and insufficient breaks, as well as humiliation and abuse.
Warehouse worker, Rashad Long, said, “They talk to you like you’re nothing—all they care about is their numbers. They talk to you like you’re a robot.”
This push comes at a time when Amazon is expected to get more than $1 billion in tax breaks and grants from New York City as part of the Long Island City deal. Tax breaks for corporations come at the expense of the mass of working people. A city’s budget should reflect the pressing needs of the people for affordable housing, childcare, education, health care, and more. Working class New Yorkers (as elsewhere) are struggling to pay rent and put food on the table. Amazon, on the other hand, already enjoys massive profits gained from the sweat of its global workforce (and an army of workers in the U.S. Postal Service, USPS, etc); Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, is the richest man in the world.
As the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) president, Stuart Appelbaum recently said, “If the taxpayers are giving Amazon $3 billion, then taxpayers have the right to demand that Amazon stop being a union-busting company.” The RWDSU is the union that the Staten Island workers are organizing with. The union has also backed the organizing push among workers at Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired last year. As of now, Amazon’s U.S. workforce is not unionized. These initial organizing efforts are, therefore, highly significant.
