From the May-June 2020 issue of News & Letters
by Buddy Bell
Los Angeles—Amazon has been bursting with new business as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads. It has scooped up any workers that don’t have the savings to stay at home themselves. The turnover adds to preexisting challenges for workers in Amazon’s enormous fulfillment factories who are trying not to contract the virus.
On April 4, 2020, Amazon workers and their allies shut down an Amazon warehouse in Chicago over dangerous working conditions. Photo by Pete DeMay Twitter
On March 20, workers at the Amazon fulfillment factory in Queens, N.Y., learned of a coworker’s positive test for COVID-19 and walked off the job. Infections were reported over the next week at Amazon facilities in Staten Island, N.Y.; Joliet, Ill.; Moreno Valley, Calif.; Shepherdsville, Ky.; Houston and Katy, Tex.; Edison, N.J.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Brownstown, Romulus, and Shelby, Mich.; Wallingford, Conn.; Oklahoma City, Okla.; Calenzano, Italy; Barcelona and San Fernando, Spain.
WORKERS WALK OUT FOR THEIR LIVES
On March 30, one-third of the Amazon employees at the Calenzano, Italy, plant went on strike. In Staten Island, N.Y., where the number of cases had climbed to 10, workers walked out and demanded the warehouse be shuttered for health reasons. Workers at the Robbinsville, N.J., site walked out in solidarity.
Amazon lashed out immediately, illegally firing a strike organizer and portraying workers who remained on the production line as “heroic.” The next day, non-union supermarket workers at various U.S. locations of Amazon’s subsidiary Whole Foods moved forward with a work stoppage that had originally been planned for May 1.
STRIKE ON AMAZON PRIME DAY
This comes nine months after workers went on strike in Shakopee, Minn., for higher pay on the first Amazon-created consumer holiday of Prime Day. When asked why she planned to strike, Meg Brady told KALW: “I think the turning point came when I got injured from repetitive stress. The job I do is basically like doing aerobics for ten hours… I take an item from a conveyor belt, turn around, take a few steps, and put it into a chute. On the other side are packers… It is constant movement—squatting, walking, reaching—for ten hours…
“I think if Amazon made an investment in ergonomics, it would reduce a lot of injuries… I suggested a raised floor. No changes have been implemented to make it a better workstation.”
Through Prime Day, Amazon hopes to offer fulfillment of shipping orders faster. “Rebinners” like Brady are expected to process 600 items per hour, one item every six seconds.
Amazon engineers and tech workers—who are the cutting edge of the company’s use of such innovations as work speedup bracelets that time and track worker movements—shocked the corporate sector when they spoke out publicly in support of the Shakopee strike. Two were fired in April after voicing support of warehouse workers’ protests.
As public health and well-being come into visible conflict with the efficiency of companies in extracting surplus value from labor, more and more people can be expected to oppose this type of order.
In recent weeks, workers who drive passengers with the mobile applications Uber and Lyft began to see a lot of their business dry up as more and more people cancelled events and started telecommuting in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak. Even though it is safer to stay home, some workers cannot afford to do that, and low-wage workers in general are unlikely to have work-from-home as an option.
DRIVERS PROTECTING PASSENGERS
On March 11, a radio reporter with KQED was hit by a strong odor of cleaning products as he interviewed driver Erica MacGetto: “I have the surgical masks that the doctor gave me today for any passengers that are coughing. I have my Lysol and then I have my mask that the doctor gave me today that she recommends that I wear… but I’m afraid to wear because I might scare people.”
MacGetto, who lost her apartment and sleeps in her car, spoke of being hounded by debtors. “PayPal wants their money. I got a reminder that Capital One wants their money today. I just have no choice whatsoever.”
By March 18, Uber and Lyft were encouraging only medically necessary rides, and were transitioning many of the drivers to UberEats and other food delivery apps. Lyft started allowing the use of its passenger app to arrange delivery of free and reduced-cost lunches to schoolchildren sheltering in place.
For Lyft driver Dominique Smith, this setup was woefully unsustainable. “I worked ten hours yesterday and made $40,” he told The Guardian. “We are getting starvation wages while getting food to people who need it.” Uber driver Cherri Murphy said she was able to make $90 in nine hours, which only barely covered gas and sanitizer.
In California, Uber and Lyft have been flouting AB5, a state law that specifically classifies rideshare drivers as employees of the apps and not contractors. In San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, drivers held protests (with physical distancing) on March 18 outside empty corporate offices, whose employees had all been directed to work from home. The drivers demanded paid sick leave, a guaranteed minimum wage, reimbursement for cleaning supplies, and redirection of a $110 million campaign war chest for the repeal of AB5 by ballot initiative.
DRIVERS TO CALIFORNIA: ENFORCE AB5
Drivers challenged the state for not enforcing AB5. Starting on March 30, the independent union Rideshare Drivers United began encouraging workers to file wage claims online with the California Labor Commission. “It’s time for drivers and other misclassified workers to enforce AB5 and show the public and the State of California how much these companies are stealing from us.” Add your own claim at https://drivers-united.org/a/submit-a-wage-claim.
Though Uber and Lyft have made a public offer of sick pay if drivers are diagnosed with COVID-19 or are under a doctor’s order to self-quarantine, the companies know there are not enough testing kits. In a Mobile Workers Alliance virtual town hall on March 31, Uber driver Ruben said that even with a doctor’s note he was denied any benefits.
Hired grocery shoppers at Instacart stayed home on March 28-29 in an attempt to hold their second nationwide strike, for hazard pay and reimbursement for PPE. But Instacart bragged to The Verge that because 50,000 new people signed up to deliver groceries, the strike had “absolutely no impact on operations.”
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