Amazon workers to strike at New York site over management’s response to spread of coronavirus
- About 100 Amazon employees at a Staten Island fulfilment centre plan to go on strike at noon on Monday
- They are demanding that the site be closed for at least two weeks and sanitised, and for workers to be compensated
Employees are demanding that the Staten Island site be closed for at least two weeks and sanitised. The e-commerce giant closed a warehouse in Queens for cleaning after an employee tested positive, as reported by The Atlantic. In addition, they’re asking for workers to be paid during this time, as well as retroactively compensating those who had already stayed home out of fears for their health and safety.
Chris Smalls, a management assistant at the site known as JFK8 and lead organiser of the strike, has worked at Amazon for five years at three buildings in the New York tri-state area. Colleagues began falling ill after Amazon managers came back from a trip to Seattle, Washington, the initial epicentre of the virus in the US, according to Smalls.
He left work in the second week of March out of concern for his health. Smalls returned last week to rally support for a work stoppage among the building’s 4,500 employees and reiterate his concerns and recommendations to management.
“What are we waiting for?” he said he told the site’s general manager and head of human resources. “Someone to die?”