DOZENS of Amazon warehouse workers staged a walkout in protest to demand better treatment and higher wages during the holiday rush.
The pre-Christmas strike took place at two Amazon warehouse locations in Staten Island and Cicero, Illinois, on Wednesday.
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According to a statement from activists, workers at four Staten Island facilities staged a “lunchtime walkout,” slamming “unfair labor practices committed by Amazon,” including illegal interference with union organizing.
The activists stated that “in light of the increasing severity of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Omicron variant, we are demanding the return of hazard pay and unlimited unpaid time off.”
Despite the frigid temperatures, workers rallied in Times Square on Wednesday afternoon.
Employees shared stories of working conditions and announced their petition for a Union election had been refiled.
A video shared on Twitter by organizer Christian Smalls showed organizers distributing flyers promoting the walkout and gathering food to distribute to employees.
In Illinois, two Amazon facilities near Chicago staged a pre-Christmas walkout on Wednesday morning during the busiest time of the year.
“We have been passed over for raises. We are being overworked, even when there is sufficient people to work here,” a worker at the DLN2 facility in Cicero said in a live stream posted by the Amazonians United.
“We have not received the bonuses we were promised. There are people here who were hired as permanent workers, and then they took their badges away and made them temporary workers.
“They are staffing this place unsafely, making people work too fast, even though we don’t have to.”
Illinois workers, who work between 1:20 AM and 11:50 AM, are also demanding a $5 per hour raise.
In response to the protests, an Amazon spokesperson said: “We respect the rights of employees to protest and recognize their legal right to do so.
“We are proud to offer employees leading pay, competitive benefits, and the opportunity to grow with our company.”
TORNADO RIPS THROUGH AMAZON WAREHOUSE
The move comes after a tornado ripped through an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, on December 10, leaving six factory employees dead and trapping 100 workers inside.
Days later, a 911 call from the building was first obtained by Business Insider through a public record request from the Edwardsville Police Department, has revealed the chaos that ensued inside.
An unidentified caller contacted 911 from a bathroom at the Amazon warehouse just minutes after a tornado passed through.
According to the report, the caller, who was with two other women, said workers had to hide out in bathrooms, not the building’s designated tornado shelter.
The three women, all delivery drivers, arrived at the warehouse at 8pm on December 10 and were told to “go straight to the bathroom,” the dispatcher learned.
The caller also noted that all three of the women were in a women’s bathroom and huddled together as others were in the men’s bathroom or in the center of the warehouse.
Following the tornado, which prompted the warehouse’s 40-foot-high and 11-inch walls to crumble, the caller explained that she and the other women were “blocked in” and “underneath a bunch of rubble.”
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She told the dispatcher: “I hear other people screaming but I don’t know where they are. I’m so scared. Please help me.”
The caller then said one of the other women was “unresponsive.”
The women were dug out from the rubble shortly after.
In total, at least forty-five people escaped the building alive and only seven of them worked for Amazon full time, Quartz reported.
AMAZON VICTIMS
The deceased Amazon warehouse workers were later identified as – Clayton Hope, 29, Deandre S. Morrow, 28, Kevin D. Dickey, 62, Etheria S. Hebb, 34, Larry E. Virden, 46, and Austin J. McEwen, 26.
Hope is a maintenance worker and Navy veteran who tried to warn colleagues.
“He just said he needed to tell someone that [the tornado] was coming,” his mother, Carla Cope, told The Daily Beast. He had a big heart and he was a very sweet man.”
Hope’s mother went to the warehouse after the storm passed on Friday, looking for her son. She learned hours later from authorities that her son didn’t make it.
McEwen, the youngest Amazon victim, was a driver with Amazon who reportedly died while sheltering in the bathroom with coworkers.
Friends said he was an only child who loved to hunt with his friends.
The family of Hebb described her as a new mother, according to the New York Post.
“She was a younger cousin of our generation so I always felt the big cuz/lil cuz bond, she was a new and dedicated mother, a naturally beautiful person from the heart all the way to her radient [sic] outer beauty,” her cousin Coerce Smith wrote on Facebook.
Navy veteran Virden’s girlfriend of 13 years, Cherie Jones, told the Post: “I got text messages from him. He always tells me when he is filling up the Amazon truck when he is getting ready to go back… I was like ‘OK I love you.’
“He’s like ‘well Amazon won’t let me leave until after the storm blows over.'”
The message was sent around 16 minutes before the storm touched down.
Virden had worked at Amazon for five months and was the dad of four kids, including adopted children. He also served in Iraq.
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