Amazon has suspended 50 workers in Staten Island, New York, after workers at the only unionized Amazon warehouse in the U.S. waged a work stoppage in protest of being forced to work after a fire broke out in a compactor in the warehouse.
According to the union, per The Washington Post, the company has suspended 10 union leaders and another 40 workers who participated in the work stoppage. The suspensions, which the company says will be paid, will last until an investigation is conducted into the protest.
Over 650 night shift workers stopped working on Monday in protest of unsafe working conditions, saying they could still smell smoke and had difficulty breathing in the warehouse, according to Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which workers at the warehouse voted to join earlier this year. Even after one worker went to the hospital, management threatened workers with termination if they didn’t return to work, union officials said.
“Amazon associates at JFK8 had our lives placed at risk yesterday, and this isn’t the first time. Yesterday’s safety and health risk, a fire, is but one example of why we voted to form a union, so we can have a real voice on crucial issues which impact all associates every day,” the union wrote in a statement following the suspensions, demanding that the company recognize and begin bargaining with ALU.
The union says that workers had demanded to see the fire department report or information on what was happening with the fire, but were stonewalled by the company. ALU plans on filing an unfair labor practice charge over the suspensions.
“We will not tolerate any unsafe workplace and we will not tolerate intimidation,” the union said, ending with a call for the company to “STOP STALLING AND START NEGOTIATING!”
Amazon has yet to recognize the union, and has tried to challenge the results of the election. Last month, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) official recommended that the company’s objections be “rejected in their entirety,” a recommendation that the board is likely to follow.
The company said in a statement on Monday that day shift workers had been sent home and that the fire department had certified that the building was safe to work in before night shift workers reported to work. The union says that the company’s claims about the incident are false.
“It’s a shame that due to Amazon’s lack of safety protocols, workers had to take a stand, because they were not feeling as though the company took [the fire] as seriously as they should have,” ALU President Christian Smalls told The Washington Post.
The suspensions come just over a week before workers near Albany, New York, are slated to vote on joining ALU.
The union and organizing workers have continually raised concerns about Amazon’s safety protocols. Amazon went through a similar incident in March, when the unionizing warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, filled with a smoky, mysterious gas. Workers continued working as the gas disseminated on the warehouse floor, with no word from management, and evacuated by word of mouth as emergency vehicles arrived on the scene. The gas was later determined to be vaporized oil from a malfunctioning compressor.
Amazon warehouses are disproportionately dangerous when compared to other warehouses in the U.S. Last year, nearly 50 percent of warehouse injuries occurred at an Amazon warehouse, despite the company only employing about 33 percent of warehouse workers nationwide.
In a report released after a tornado ripped through an Amazon warehouse in Illinois last year, federal workplace safety officials determined that the company technically meets legal safety requirements, but at a bare minimum level. Progressive lawmakers and union organizers have demanded that the company increase its safety standards and put workers’ safety first, rather than strict quotas.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy