‘Don’t quit. Organize’: Amazon union push spreads it wings after New York success
In the wake of a historic union election victory at the Amazon JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, more Amazon workers in the US are trying to replicate that success with their own organizing campaigns in other states.
The moves comes despite losses in Alabama and at a second warehouse in Staten Island, where workers rejected unionization pushes.
In Garner, North Carolina, a suburb of Raleigh, workers are pushing to organize a union at the Amazon warehouse RDU1, a 700,000 sq ft facility with four floors.
Through the grassroots organization Cause, Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, workers are demanding a $5 an hour pay increase; a return to digital time clocks rather than physical ones, where workers are forced to wait in long lines to punch in and out; longer breaks; a revision to Amazon’s time-off options; the formation of a worker committee to address grievances and appeals; and mental health resources for workers.
Albert Elliot, who has worked at the Garner plant for about 18 months, said the organizing effort began in response to mistreatment of workers across the board, from discrimination, racism, unequal treatment from managers, unfair write-ups, and insufficient breaks for the work they do.
“We are treated like robots, as if we have batteries on our backs,” said Elliott. “Management, they’re actually the robots. They have been trained to give this generic Amazon response of, ‘Well, we’re sorry that you feel that way,’ and so on and so forth. It’s just a generic response because they don’t know what to say and they don’t know what to do.”
Elliott said organizing at Amazon is challenging because of the sheer size of the warehouse, and how disconnected workers are from one another He said
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