![]() Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). ![]() On some level, the strike is working it’s attracting national attention, including from 2020 Democratic presidential contenders Sens. “We don’t have a majority of workers, but we’ve decided to go with the workers we have who are ready to make a stand on Prime Day, because it doesn’t take all of us to be able to send a powerful message,” Stolz told Recode. Stolz said that some workers who had planned on striking appeared to have been “spooked” by something and decided not to strike, though he wasn’t sure what had happened. Beyond the Awood Center, the Service Employees International Union, Teamsters, and the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations are backing the strike. “We see that our fights are stronger together,” Abdirahman Muse, the executive director of the Awood Center, told Bloomberg last week. ![]() The Minnesota workers were the first ones to actually sit down and talk about working conditions with Amazon management, and they’re still pushing the company to be better. ![]() The group has helped Amazon workers engage in activism before - last year, they got Amazon to reduce workloads while Muslim workers were fasting for Ramadan and convinced the company to create a designated prayer space for employees. The Awood Center, a community organization for workers in Minnesota with East African heritage, is spearheading Monday’s strike. “I think both the workers here in Minnesota and us, working for climate justice - I think we understand that just seeing any of these improvements happening at Amazon, it’s going to take all of us working together.” At the root is Amazon employees not having a say in the decisions that affect their lives and their work,” Fribley told Recode. “We see these issues as very deeply connected. The initiative failed a shareholder vote in May. Among them is Weston Fribley, a software engineer who was one of the organizers of an employee push for Amazon to implement a climate-change plan. The striking warehouse workers are being joined by a handful of Amazon engineers who are flying out from Seattle for the walkout. Organizers estimated more than 100 workers would strike, but actual turnout numbers are unclear. “It’s very mentally stressful it’s very physically stressful,” he said of the work.Īs Vox’s Alexia Fernández Campbell noted last week, warehouse workers, who “have long complained about punishing work conditions at Amazon’s fulfillment centers, are upset about the company’s recent decision to offer one-day shipping to Prime customers,” because it’s bound to increase the pressure and speed of their work. Stolz, 24, is a picker at the facility and has worked there for two years. “These should be jobs that are safe, reliable, and that people can depend on,” William Stolz, a striking worker at Amazon’s Shakopee warehouse, told Recode. It also indicates that Amazon’s promise last year to pay a $15 minimum wage is not enough to keep its workforce happy forever. The strike, which Bloomberg reported last week, probably won’t have much of an impact on Amazon’s business - it has more than 100 warehouses in the United States - but it’s yet another example of both corporate and lower-level tech workers’ increased willingness to speak out against their employers. Workers in Shakopee, Minnesota, which is about 25 miles southwest of Minneapolis, are striking for six hours and holding an afternoon rally outside Amazon’s warehouse on Monday, the first day of Amazon’s two-day Prime discount extravaganza. They’re demanding that the company ease productivity quotas, convert more temporary workers to Amazon employees, and do more to address on-the-job injuries. ![]() Amazon warehouse workers in Minnesota are striking during one of the company’s biggest sales days of the year: Prime Day. ![]()
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