4 DECEMBER 19, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
‘We won’t let them abuse workers’
Community activists rally for workers’ rights outside of Amazon warehouse
BY ANGÉLICA ACEVEDO
AACEVEDO@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@QNS
Freezing temperatures didn’t stop community activists,
former Staten Island Amazon warehouse workers,
Senator Jessica Ramos and Queens Borough President
candidate Costa Constantinides from protesting the
future openings of Amazon distribution centers in
Woodside and Maspeth, right outside of their newly
opened warehouse in Woodside on Dec. 16.
That morning, Athena Coalition, a group of New
York, New Jersey and other national organizations
that advocate for working people in the U.S. — such
as Make the Road New York, one of the organizers at
the rally — released a report entitled “Packaging Pain,”
which detailed the “hazardous conditions” that Amazon
warehouse workers face during the holidays.
“We are here to express our outrage, we are here to
express our concerns of the dangers facing workers inside
of this facility and every single Amazon warehouse
around the country,” Angeles Solis, lead organizer of
the workplace justice team at Make the Road New York,
said.
Some of the fi ndings of that report include an injury
rate that is three times higher than the national average
rate — which is based on Amazon’s OSHA 300A log data
from a total of 24 facilities from 15 states in comparison
to logs of other professions from the U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics’ Injury, Illness, and Fatalities Data
for 2018. The full report is on their new website www.
amazonpackagingpain.org.
At the rally, Make the Road Field Coordinator Juan
Goris mentioned that they also found that the time
period between Dec. 10 and 16 is “the most dangerous
week of the year for people who work in Amazon’s
distribution network.”
“For too long, Amazon has been able to get away with
treating workers like robots. Workers leave these
warehouses in pain everyday,” Goris said. “They feel
they don’t have a choice because a robot determines
whether they can put food on the table for their family.
We must bring an end to these inhumane working
conditions which thousands of New Yorkers have to
endure everyday.”
Ramos echoed Make the Road’s statements during
her speech at the rally, emphasizing that “in Queens,
this is not the standard for good jobs and we will not
stand for it.”
“According to data collected by the Athena Coalition,
Amazon workers are more likely to be injured at work
than police offi cers, lumber jacks or coal miners, and it’s
truly a shame that one of the world’s wealthiest corporations
subjects its hardest working laborers to such cruel
workplace conditions. We need to provide relief from
the brutal demands of their jobs immediately,” Ramos
said.
Ramos also mentioned a press conference she held
earlier this year when they learned about the warehouse
in Woodside where they were standing, located
at 1 Bulova Avenue, which opened recently.
“Because it was an as-of-right project, there was no
requirement for community input so unfortunately
our voices have long gone unheard by Amazon and by
its CEO Jeff Bezos,” she said.
Councilman Constantinides, who was also against
Amazon’s HQ2 earlier this year, added that in addition
to unsafe working environments in the warehouses,
Amazon’s next-day or two-day shipping has caused its
drivers to get into car accidents, but oft en avoid liability
for those accidents.
“We see the blue vans all over this community right
now, zipping around our neighborhoods in a hurry to
get where they need to go because a robot determines
how quickly they need to make their delivery … we’ve
witnessed several car accidents with these vehicles,”
Constantinides said.
“If the richest man in the world and Amazon, one of
the richest companies in the world, want to be here in
western Queens they have to work with New York City
union rules,” he added. “This is a union town. This is a
town that stands up for labor, for workers, for those
who need a voice.”
Former Staten Island warehouse workers Xuepeng
Pang and Ilya Geller spoke at the rally about the treatment
they endured at their Amazon location — which
had its workers go on strike in November in demand of
better working conditions.
According to Pang and Geller, the warehouse had
tight surveillance and tracked their breaks — two 10-
minute breaks and one 30-minute lunch break during a
10-12 hour-long shift — so that no time was wasted. They
both emphasized that almost half of their break was
spent walking to and from their lunch area in the “14
football fi elds long” warehouse.
At the rally, Solis read a statement from another
former Staten Island Amazon worker Hiba Aly, who
couldn’t make it to Woodside.
“While I worked at Amazon, I was constantly dehydrated
and on the verge of fainting multiple times. I
feared taking a break because I would be punished for
‘Time Off Task’ and potentially fi red,” the statement read.
“I was let go because Amazon demands unrealistically
high standards of work and when I was sick at work, I
could not meet them.”
Another member of Make the Road, Amado Sanchez,
read a statement in Spanish at the rally which tied
in Amazon’s work with Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE). In July, protesters in New York
presented Bezos with a petition with more than 270,000
signatures demanding the company stop giving ICE and
other government and police agencies data they collect
from their customers.
“I have lived in Queens for several decades … I have
fought for workers’ rights for many years and we
achieved protections against wage theft , for sick days
and more. But Amazon is putting all our victories at
Photo: Angélica Acevedo/QNS
risk,” Sanchez said in Spanish. “I’m going to keep fi ghting
Amazon so they listen to us. We will not let them
abuse their workers. We will not let them collaborate
with ICE. We are immigrants united against this
monopoly. ”
AMAZON’S RESPONSE
QNS reached out to Amazon for comment on the rally
and the report, and a spokesperson said that “no current
Amazon associate participated in the event and it was
obvious to the hundreds of individuals who work in our
building that an outside organization used our site to
raise its own visibility and spread misinformation.”
The spokesperson said that Amazon provides a
“safe and quality work environment” in which their
associates are the “heart and soul of the customer
experience.”
In regards to the report, the spokesperson said that
it’s “inaccurate” to say that their warehouses, which
they refer to as fulfi llment centers, are unsafe given
the size of their workforce.
The spokesperson added that there’s a “dramatic
level of under-recording of safety incidents across the
industry,” and in an eff ort to combat that, Amazon took
an “aggressive stance” in 2016 to record injuries “no
matter how big or small.”
When it comes to the report, the Amazon spokesperson
said that it was “developed and promoted by a
collection of self-interested critics.”
“The fact is nothing is more important to us than
safety — last year we provided more than one million
hours of safety training to employees and invested
more than $55 million on safety improvement projects,
including ergonomic improvements,” the spokesperson
said. “We continually improve safety at our sites by reducing
physical risk through the design of processes,
equipment and work areas, and we also have a Safety
Leadership Index across our US operations where every
associate answers a series of questions each month to
directly tell us how they feel we can further enhance
our safety culture.”
They added that they encourage anyone to see their
warehouses for themselves by taking a tour at one of
their fulfi llment centers. People can schedule tours
on their website at www.amazonfctours.com or email
them at tours@amazon.com.
/WWW.QNS.COM
/www.amazonpackagingpain.org
/www.amazonpackagingpain.org
/www.amazonfctours.com
link
link
/amazonpackagingpain.org
/www.amazonfctours.com
link
link
