ER Warehouse Reporter

  The Teamster Project to Unionize Amazon In an official resolution obtained by Motherboard, one of the country's most powerful unions has declared an unprecedented effort to unionize Amazon. By Lauren Kaori Gurley The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the country's largest and most powerful unions, has said in an official resolution obtained by Motherboard that unionizing and building worker power at Amazon is the top priority moving forward. The announcement comes on Prime Day , one of Amazon's busiest days of the year "The Teamsters will build the types of worker and community power necessary to take on one of the most powerful corporations in the world and win," said Randy Korgan, the Teamster's National Amazon Director, in a 26-minute video on "the Amazon Project" obtained by Motherboard, that will be played at the Teamsters convention on Tuesday. At their virtual convention on Tuesday, Teamster delegates from roughly 500 local Team

There’s a New Duo That Could Help Rein In Amazon June 17, 2021 By Stacy Mitchell Ms. Mitchell is a co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit research and advocacy group that seeks to protect communities against concentrated economic power. In a welcome joining of forces, labor unions and small-business advocacy groups this month supported an antitrust bill that would give New York State sweeping new authority to sue corporate titans like Amazon for abusing their market power in ways that harm competitors or workers. Labor and small business make an unusual political pairing these days. The idea that small businesses are aligned with big businesses and opposed to labor unions took hold in the 1980s and has been conventional wisdom ever since. But this alignment wasn’t always the case. In the decades after the Great Depression, unions and small businesses were natural allies in a New Deal coalition that backed muscular policies to limit corporate power. Fortunat

 Time to Organize

  Amazon Fulfillment Center: Workers Speak Out   DRAFT   Problems   1. Rates and quotas are too high , meaning that workers are too rushed and  pressured. They can’t help each other when something goes wrong or a coworker  has a question, because this takes away time from their own task. In all the  different jobs, the benchmarks are much too high. This is a safety issue.   2. Vacation time is only 4 days (40 hours) per year . Because of 10 hour shifts, 40  hours is not enough time to take a vacation. Vacation time accumulates very slowly.  Yet workers need vacations to recharge their minds and bodies, connect with family  and tend to their personal lives. This is an uneven exchange between what the  workers give and what the company gives back.   3. Time Off Task is unfair, because things are too far away. It takes 5 minutes to  get to a break room where there is space to take a break. Half of the break is lost to  travel time. There is not enough time to reach and use the bathroom. A

  50 CENTS IS NOT ENOUGH!  The raise is a joke. What is 50 cents going to do for my family?  –Triangle Amazon Worker Organizing brings higher wages for Amazon workers!  Amazon recently announced that 500,000 employees will receive an hourly pay raise of  between 50 cents and $3. This announcement follows nationwide efforts organized by  Amazon workers, including petitions, walk-outs, and the highly publicized organizing  struggle in Bessemer, Alabama.   The pay bump shows that organizing   works! Organizing in Bessemer and   around the country scared Amazon   into giving us a raise. Amazon is   terrified of our worker power. But 50   cents is not enough! We demand higher   wages and better working conditions.   Amazon’s pandemic profits  Amazon made record profits in 2020:   • The wealth of Jeff Bezos, Amazon   Chief Executive, grew $75.6 billion.  • Amazon’s net profits increased by   84% to $21.3 billion.  Workers have seen only a small fraction of this money, despite working through

 LESSONS LEARNED (Amazonians United: https://labornotes.org/2020/05/how- amazon-workers-are-organizing-long-haul) We would point to the following lessons as more Amazon warehouse workers begin organizing for protections. 1) Build Deep: The power workers have comes from our ability to stand together and demonstrate solidarity. Start with building a team—an organizing committee (OC)— first gathering people who want to make a change and who you trust. The more your team gets people from different departments and different social groups, the better. 2) Inoculate: Having fear of taking action together is normal. ...Communicate with your coworkers that if only one person speaks out, they are more at risk, but when organized we are stronger against management's attacks. Let them know that management will crack down, and we have to have each other's backs. 3) Take Action Together: A petition with widely felt demands is a great way to start. It helps you to have conversations with cowor

Will Evans | September 29, 2020 source: https://revealnews.org/article/how-amazon-hid-its-safety-crisis/ Robots. Prime Day. Holiday peak.  Internal records show Amazon has deceived the public on rising injury rates among its warehouse workers. On Cyber Monday 2014, Amazon operations chief Dave Clark proudly unveiled the company’s new warehouse of the future in Tracy, California.  Behind him, tall yellow racks packed with vitamins, toy rockets and paintball gear zipped across the floor, lugged by the powerful, squat orange robots that would help catapult the company toward world domination. In a checked shirt and with neatly parted hair, Clark looked more the part of a high school teacher than a corporate executive, as he cheerfully called himself “head elf of Santa’s workshop around the world.” Of Amazon’s transformation,  he said , “It’s better for everybody.” Workers no longer would have to walk massive warehouse floors to find the right power drill – instead, robots would bring the