Amazon workers to strike at NY site over virus concerns

About 100 Amazon.com employees at a New York fulfillment center intend to go on hit at noon on Mon, alleging operations has been unresponsive to basic safety concerns and the pass on of the coronavirus at the facility.

Employees are actually demanding that the Staten Island internet site be closed for in least two weeks and sanitized. The e-commerce giant shut a warehouse in Queens for cleaning after a worker tested confident, as reported by The Atlantic. Furthermore, they’re asking for employees to be paid during this time, as well as retroactively compensating those that had already stayed residence out of fears for his or her health and safety.

Chris Smalls, a management assistant at the site referred to as JFK8 and business lead organizer of the hit, spent some time working at Amazon for five years at three properties in the brand new York tri-state area. Colleagues began dropping ill after Amazon managers came back from a vacation to Seattle, Washington, the original epicenter of the virus in the US, according to Smalls.

He left work found in the next week of March out of concern for his health. Smalls returned last week to rally support for a do the job stoppage among the building’s 4,500 employees and reiterate his issues and advice to management.

“What are we looking forward to?” he said he informed the site’s standard manager and brain of recruiting. “You to definitely die?”He says the company is not transparent about how precisely many staff members at the Staten Island site have tested positive for Covid-19 and also have taken insufficient safety safety measures, incorporating allowing one of is own colleagues to come back to job while awaiting her test outcomes.

“Amazon’s inaction has left workers with no other choice but to go out of an unsafe work place to protect their own and everyone’s wellness,” said Dania Rajendra, director of Athena, a group that advocates for hourly workers and smaller businesses, and a consistent critic of Amazon. “More than enough is enough.”

Athena is leading a coalition expressing worries of the workers. Media of the planned hit was initially reported by CNBC. Amazon didn't immediately answer an emailed obtain comment.“People have to be placed accountable, sometimes Jeff Bezos himself,” Smalls said in a phone interview. “These properties all over the globe should be shut down. We are the breeding ground for the coronavirus.”

Employees took to Facebook and Instagram teams to organize the specifics of the work stoppage and share testimonies of working conditions, he said.