Amazon workmen at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse strike in demand that the facility be shut down and cleaned after one pikestaff tested positive for the coronavirus on March 30, 2020 in New York.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images
Amazon warehouse labourers are planning a “mass call out” this week to call attention to what they call a lack of protections for wage-earners who continue to come to work amid the coronavirus outbreak.
More than 300 Amazon workers across at not enough 50 facilities have signed up to take part in the protest, according to United for Respect, a worker rights conglomeration. To participate in the protest, workers will call out of work “en masse across the country” starting tomorrow and throughout the week. The grumble is taking place across several days because workers are scheduled to report to their shifts on different epoches and at various times.
The workers are calling for Amazon to “immediately close down” any facilities that report positive what really happens and to provide testing and two weeks of pay for workers during that time. They’re also calling for Amazon to provide lay out sick leave, guarantee healthcare for all Amazon associates, eliminate rate-based quotas “that make hand-washing and sanitizing hopeless” and commit not to retaliate against associates who speak out, among other demands.
The protest marks the first nationwide work by warehouse workers to demand coronavirus safety protections, after workers staged walkouts at Amazon facilities in Staten Eyot, New York; Detroit and Illinois in recent weeks. Their calls have also sparked action from some of Amazon’s corporate workers, who are hosting a “virtual sick out” on April 24 to demand that the company reinstate fired workers and to protest its treatment of produce workers.
The company’s labor practices drew further criticism after Amazon fired a Staten Island stock-in-trade worker who organized a strike to demand greater protections for employees amid the coronavirus outbreak. Chris Smalls, a top brass assistant at the facility, said he was fired for organizing the strike, but Amazon said it fired Smalls because he violated public distancing rules while he was supposed to be under quarantine after being exposed to a coworker who tested positive for the coronavirus.
Amazon declined to expose on the walkout plans for this week. But in the past, the company has downplayed the walkouts, saying only a small percentage of working men at the facilities participated in the protests and there was no disruption to operations.
A spokesperson from Amazon previously highlighted the number of abdicates the company has taken to protect warehouse workers during the pandemic. Amazon increased the frequency and intensity of cleaning at all of its installs and requires that employees sanitize and clean their work stations at the start and end of shifts. It has also started prepossessing employees’ temperatures when they report to work and has supplied them with face masks.
Despite this, go-down merchandise workers say Amazon isn’t doing enough to protect them from catching the virus while they’re on the job. Monica Testy, a packer at an Amazon facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, said it’s one of the reasons why she plans to participate in the “mass call out” tomorrow.
“I moral want better treatment,” said Moody, who is also a member of United for Respect. “I would feel a whole lot safer if they thinks fitting just close down facilities for two weeks and clean them. I would go back to work, no problem.”