Photograph Source: Fibonacci Blue – CC BY 2.0

by Matt Smith

Counterpunch

Amazon and its contractors have a pattern of retaliating against and intimidating employees who speak out. I know – because they also tried to do it to me.

Last week, my Amazon coworkers in New York took the courageous step of walking off the job to protest our company’s lack of action to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Amazon workers in Detroit and Chicago have followed suit, demanding that Amazon shut down any warehouse where positive cases of the virus are found, to ensure a thorough cleaning.

Out of a selfish concern for their profits, Amazon has refused to take this basic step, despite repeated requests from Amazon workers, including a petition signed last month by over 4,500 of us.

Now, Amazon employees have tested positive in at least 19 warehouses around the country, and the situation has become dire. So my coworkers are taking action.

But rather than act to protect our health, Amazon’s wealthy executives have chosen to retaliate against employees who speak out. In a brazen attempt to suppress employee dissent, they responded to the Staten Island walkout by firing its main organizer, Chris Smalls.

This decision came from the highest levels of the company. In leaked meeting notes between Jeff Bezos and company executives, Amazon Senior Vice President and General Counsel, David Zapolsky, made racist, anti-worker remarks against Chris, calling him “not smart or articulate” and arguing the company should make him “the face of the entire union/organizing movement.”

The billionaires and executives at Amazon want control, and they are terrified by the idea of workers getting organized to demand things like paid sick leave, hazard pay, and safe working conditions that might have the slightest impact on their billions of dollars in profits. The executives are nervous at the increased questioning by their rank-and-file, including tech and corporate employees. That’s why they are desperate to prevent workers like Chris from speaking out. As Chris put it in an interview with socialist Seattle councilmember Kshama Sawant, by firing him, Amazon is “trying to cut off the head of the snake.”

Chris is not alone. Amazon and its contractors have a pattern of retaliating against and intimidating employees who speak out. I know – because they also tried to do it to me.

Retaliation and Intimidation at Amazon

I work as a cargo handler in Kent, WA, at an Amazon delivery station called HBF2. And like many Amazon delivery workers, I work for a third-party contractor.

As far back as February, when COVID-19 first began spreading in Washington state, my coworkers and I have had growing concerns. We have not received basic health supplies like hand sanitizer and face masks from our employer. We have also not received additional paid sick leave, for those of us who might come down with symptoms of COVID-19.

Amazon was not protecting us and neither was our contractor, so I began talking with coworkers about what we could do—organizing meetings outside of work and circulating a petition with a list of changes that were needed.

When my manager found out about it, he pulled me into the office, telling me that he had heard about me “organizing people into groups” and “trying to organize a union”. In a blatant attempt at intimidation, he told me, “it will not be tolerated.”

Threats and retaliation like those against me and Chris are not an aberration. They are a central part of Amazon’s business model.

Just last year, at that same warehouse on Staten Island, Amazon fired another employee, Justin Rashad Long, in retaliation for trying to organize a union. And earlier this year, Amazon made headlines for threatening to fire tech workers who dared to criticize the company’s lack of action on climate change […]

Via https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/07/amazon-retaliation-workers-striking-back/