Amazon: Recognize the Union Now!
Wednesday, December 22 @ 8pm
Times Square at the Red Steps
Support Staten Island Amazon Workers Who Will be Conducting a Walkout That Day
On
Wednesday, Dec 22, at 8 PM at Times Square: come show solidarity with
Staten Island Amazon workers who will be walking off the job earlier
that day!
The demand of
the rally is that Amazon immediately recognize the union. This call has
been underscored by the heartbreaking deaths of workers at the
tornado-destroyed warehouse in Edwardsville, IL, whom Amazon prevented
from using cell phones or even leaving!
"As
a matter of public health and a matter of reparations, Amazon should
immediately recognize the union without a drawn-out NLRB election,"
Amazon Labor Union leader Chris Smalls said.
The
needless deaths in Edwardsville underscored Amazon's
reckless profit-over-people practices, which range from other instances
of forcing workers to stay on the job in extreme weather (Hurricane Ida)
to having more than double the average rate of warehouse injuries.
This week The Intercept reported that Amazon warehouses barely even have fire drills because the bosses don't want to take time away from production. The
same company that drags workers into anti-union captive
audience meetings tries to get away with not scheduling life-saving
drills.
Other Reasons We Demand That Amazon Immediately Recognize the Union:
SKIP THE VOTE The
Amazon Labor Union has already signed up thousands of Staten Island
Amazon warehouse workers who want a union. Amazon should recognize the
union now. Last year's Bessemer experience shows that long drawn-out
voting processes are controlled by the bosses who use that period to lie
to, intimidate and threaten the workers into voting no for the union.
AMAZON CAN’T BE TRUSTED NOT TO UNION-BUST Amazon
was found by the National Labor Relations Board to have denied a mostly
Black workforce in Alabama the right to vote for a union.
AMAZON WORKERS NEED A UNION TO RESIST RACISM & GENDER BIAS Amazon
is the target of multiple lawsuits from workers subjected to racist and
anti-woman harassment. This includes the racist treatment of Amazon
Labor Union president Chris Smalls after he spoke up about lack of COVID
safety. It also includes the placement of hundreds of Amazon's
pollution-spewing warehouses in communities of color, who are subjected
to the toxic exhaust emitted by massive vehicles coming and going.
GETTING JUSTICE FOR THE WORKERS THROUGH OFFICIAL CHANNELS TAKES FOREVER After
the Alabama union vote in which Amazon lied to, cheated and intimidated
its workers, it took until August for an NLRB report to be completed
finding Amazon guilty – then it took another three months for the
decision that a new vote should be held. This is now a full year from
the start of the Bessemer campaign, during which time the notorious 150%
worker turnover rate has meant the quitting or firing of union
supporters. In the meantime, people have suffered more wear and tear on
their bodies or were simply fired for not making rate or having too much
"time off task" in Amazon’s impossible standards.
“MAKING RATE” INJURES WORKERS Amazon
has sky-high rates of injuries, more than double the average of other
companies doing the same work. Many of those injuries are
musculoskeletal disorders that come from repetitive lifting. These are
the kind of injuries that linger, sometimes for the rest of a worker’s
life. Ambulance responses to Amazon warehouses increase by almost 50% in
the weeks leading to Black Friday because of the punishing demand.
AMAZON DRIVES DOWN PREVAILING WAGES Because
the minimum wage is so appallingly low at $7.25 an hour, Amazon claims
to pay decent entry wages. But it only pays more than $15/hr after being
shamed into doing so by Bernie Sanders in 2018. And the breakneck
expansion of Amazon warehouses poses a danger to wages in surrounding
areas. One of the worst examples is in Minnesota, where real wages for
warehouse workers declined 14 percent from 2015 to 2018, after the
Amazon plant opened. A union in Staten Island or anywhere will help keep
wages higher for all workers.
AMAZON ISN'T PROTECTING ITS WORKERS FROM COVID Amazon
has actually rolled back the few COVID safety protocols it put in place
in 2020. This is a company that lied and hid COVID information from
OSHA, reporting that of 20,000 infections of its workforce, only 27
occurred on the job.

Workers Assembly Against Racism
Solidarity Center
147 W 24th Street
New York, NY 10011