Alabama Amazon Workers to Vote on Union in Midst of Warehouse Health Care Crisis

By Mark Friedman, RLNews labor reporter

On Jan. 14, Human Impact Partners and the Warehouse Workers Resources Center released a new public health study report highlighting Amazon’s inhumane working conditions and lays out how California policymakers can improve conditions for workers.

The Public Health Crisis Hidden in Amazon Warehouses report found that Amazon workers are facing a triple threat to their health, including:

• Nearly double the national average rate of warehouse workplace injury
• Chronic stress from the workload and work quota system
• Risk of contracting chronic and infectious disease due to lack of restroom access and inadequate COVID-19 protections”

The report’s authors recommend that Amazon:

• discontinue inhumane production practices that utilizes technology to force human workers to keep the same pace as a robot at Amazon’s fulfillment centers.
• Be made to ensure working conditions are within an ergonomic framework
• Implements stronger COVID-19 precautions at all Amazon warehouses and for subcontracted delivery drivers, including unlimited time for hand washing, proper and regular sanitizing of workstations, and accessible restrooms for drivers

Workers and delivery drivers paid the price for Amazon to rake in nearly $100 BILLION in 2020 alone. The report sheds light on what Amazon warehouse workers face every day: Physical injuries trying to meet quotas. Punishment for “time off task”, while only allowed six-minute breaks. Now, stress from fear of COVID-19.

Amazon has fired workers like labor organizer Chris Smalls from their Amazon’s JFK8 production warehouse in New York for organizing to protect employees facing infections on the job and challenging Amazon’s inaction.  

Chris Smalls told RL that the “TCOEW (The Committee of Essential Workers) stands in solidarity with the Amazon workers unionizing in Alabama. Their fight is not about money or benefits, it’s about safety, respect, redressing issues. It’s about having someone on your side. We believe everyone should have the right to have a voice.”

About 6,000 workers at the Bessemer, Alabama fulfillment center will vote in February on whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). Amazon is the second largest employer in the U.S. with 1 million full- and part-time employees, behind Walmart and is non-union with the exception of some of their European workforce.

Amazon’ management opposes the mail-in vote, despite the surge of COVID-19 cases nationally and within their warehouses. Amazon admitted in October that 19,816 of its U.S. employees have tested positive or are presumed positive for COVID-19 with figures presumably higher now with the national surge of infections. Hypocritically they want it in person, and at the same time continue to deny their employees PPE, “hero” pay, and harass workers taking sick time off.

“We face outrageous work quotas that have left many with illnesses and lifetime injuries,” the union said on the site. “With a union contract, we can form a worker safety committee, and negotiate the highest safety standards and protocols for our workplace.” said the union website.