Workers at Amazon Air Freight Facility in California Walk Out in Protest Over Poor Safety, Wages
© AP Photo / Craig Ruttle
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Several dozen employees at Amazon’s largest air freight facility on the West Coast of the US walked out of their jobs on Monday, protesting low pay, unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, and recent retaliation against organizers at the facility.
“We've been organizing for a $5 pay increase, safe working conditions, and an end to retaliation at the KSBD warehouse,” a group calling itself “IE Amazon Workers” posted on Facebook on Monday. KSBD is Amazon’s air freight fulfillment center in San Bernardino, California, part of the state’s “Inland Empire” (IE) region.
“Our demands have been ignored by Amazon, and we've had enough,” they added. “So today, 160 of us walked off the job. Learn more & support our efforts as we organize to make our workplaces safer, fairer, and better!”
“The Inland Empire is the largest warehouse hub in the US. It is the heart of our country's supply chain, and it is made possible by hundreds of thousands of working people like us,” the group said in a subsequent post.
“Amazon is the largest private sector employer in the region. More than 200,000 people work in warehouses in the region, and 1 in 5 of them work in Amazon facilities. Since the start of the pandemic, Amazon has made record-breaking profits and expanded its logistics network. This includes air freight fulfillment centers like KSBD. When KSBD opened in March 2021, Amazon promised the Inland Empire quality jobs. They failed to deliver. Amazon has forced us to work in extreme heat, barely paid us enough to afford rent, and now we are being retaliated against for speaking up. It’s time for Amazon to value the people who make their business possible.”
“Amazon could deliver a higher standard for workers, but they don’t,” Sara Fee, who has worked at the air hub since it opened in March 2021, told the Los Angeles Times on Monday. “A warehouse is just a warehouse. A company is just a company. The people are what makes it all work, and we are strong and united to fight for what we deserve.”
The air freight center is adjacent to San Bernardino International Airport and flies 14 flights a day into and out of the facility, which is operating 24 hours a day. Organizers told the LA Times that Amazon wants to increase that to 26 flights per day and that its employment at the facility fluctuates wildly, sometimes being as low as 1,300 workers and as high as 1,800 in peak season.
Workers said heat-related illnesses are common at the facility, as the daytime temperature commonly rises above 100 degrees Fahrenheit and much of the work of loading and unloading aircraft happens outside.
“It’s been really hot every day this summer,” Daniel Rivera, a leader of the walkout who unloads freight from aircraft, told the Washington Post. “They say there is air conditioning, but you can only feel it in some sections.”
An internal Amazon memo leaked in June revealed the company is afraid that its turnover is so high that it will deplete the available labor supply around its facilities by 2024, with some areas reaching that point even sooner. The research specifically noted that California’s Inland Empire was expected to do so by the end of 2022. Amazon has 35 facilities in the region.
“We appreciate and respect the direct relationship we have with our employees to discuss and address feedback,” Amazon spokesperson Paul Flaningan told the Post, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. “Through this open-door policy, we have many communication channels we use, including All Hands meetings, which help us address employee concerns.”
However, the company’s ability to do so has been called into question across the country as workers attempt to win representation in negotiations with the company by labor unions like Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which represents workers at a Staten Island warehouse and has expanded organizing efforts in the area. Workers at a large fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, have fought for more than a year to hold a fair union vote, bringing repeated complaints of interference against the company to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
