SERF LABOR GOES HAND IN HAND WITH THE NAFTA DEMOCRAT PARTY!
Amazon suspends as many as 80 workers who refused to work after a fire in Staten Island warehouse
As many as 80 workers at Amazon’s JFK8 Staten Island warehouse have been suspended after refusing to go to work in the immediate aftermath of a fire inside the facility. Management took the vindictive action after around 100 workers at the facility, including representatives of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which won a union election at the facility in April, staged a protest in a management office and demanded to be sent home with pay because of unsafe conditions.
The International Amazon Workers Voice calls on all workers to oppose the blatant victimization of these workers and demand their immediate reinstatement with full back pay.
The fire started in a trash compactor inside the building around 4 p.m. on Monday. As shown in several videos taken by warehouse workers and posted on social media, the blaze was significant and not isolated from the rest of the facility; a clear danger to those working inside.
One worker, a stower in the warehouse, told the World Socialist Web Site Tuesday that management, responding to the fire alarm, initially told day-shift workers to remain at their work stations. Keeping workers at their stations during an emergency is apparently standard operating procedure at JFK8. The worker told the WSWS that during past fire alarms, despite work stations powering down, management instructed workers to, “Stay at your stations while we investigate.”
Workers were eventually told to evacuate the facility after management saw the fire firsthand, and they were sent home with pay. “This was not surprising,” one worker told the WSWS. “The day shift was almost over anyway, so they thought they might as well send us home.” Workers also reported that they were not allowed to use nearby fire exits but had to use turnstiles to “badge out” before leaving the facility.
Night-shift workers, arriving shortly after the dismissal of the day shift, were directed by warehouse managers to the facility’s cafeteria and told to wait for further instructions. Workers received little to no information about what was happening, reporting that standard safety protocols were not being enforced. Warehouse safety personnel, who are supposed to be stationed at entrances during such an incident, were nowhere to be found. One worker told the WSWS, “We didn’t know what was going on. Our representatives should have been here stating what was going on.”
After over two hours, management instructed workers that it was safe to go to work, despite the warehouse reportedly still smelling of smoke and other unknown fumes. Several workers are reported to have had trouble breathing and one person was sent to the hospital.
Management’s announcement caused an eruption of anger among numerous workers, concerned over their safety and potential health risks. They demanded that all employees be sent home with pay until the facility was entirely safe for workers to return to work. Roughly 100 workers marched to the offices of JFK8 management and confronted warehouse managers.
The protest action eventually broke up with some workers returning to work while others left the facility.
The majority of JFK8 night-shift workers had returned to work before the protest. However, many have indicated strong opposition to Amazon’s actions, and several workers said that they were not informed that the protest action was taking place, almost completely unaware of the details.
The next day, dozens of workers who protested discovered that they had been suspended from work. “Smoke and fumes rise,” a warehouse worker who participated in the protest action told the WSWS the day after. “They won’t be contained to one area. That’s dangerous! I have asthma and many of the people working here have pre-existing health issues. It’s not just about me, it’s about the safety of all of us in this place. I’m not risking my life to make more money for Amazon, no one should. But for that, now I’m suspended.” Another worker who participated in the protest and was suspended added, “We have the right to do this. They’re violating our right, treating us like some slaves. All they care about are the packages, not us, never us. I went back to work and they still suspended me!”
The multibillion-dollar, multinational corporation is infamous for its horrendous and repressive working conditions, gross exploitation, callous indifference to workers’ lives and retaliation against workers’ opposition. According to a report by the Strategic Organizing Center, in 2021 Amazon reported a staggering 38,334 workplace injuries in the US alone, 7.9 injuries per 100 workers. The injury rate at Amazon’s facilities increased by 20% between 2020 and 2021. In 2021, Amazon employed “one-third of all warehouse workers in the U.S., but it was responsible for nearly one-half (49 percent) of all injuries in the warehouse industry.” The injury rate at Amazon warehouses is reported to be twice as high as the rate at non-Amazon warehouses in the logistics industry.
In the span of just three weeks in July, three workers employed at three different Amazon warehouse facilities in New Jersey died while on the job.
In December of 2021, Amazon’s DLI4 warehouse facility in Edwardsville, Illinois was struck by an EF-3 (winds of 158-206 mph) tornado, which caused the building to collapse. Plant managers at the fulfillment center disregarded days of advance storm warnings from local and national weather forecasts and refused to cancel the December 10 evening shift to keep operations going during the immensely profitable holiday season. Six workers were killed and dozens injured.
Workers in Illinois who raised concerns about the approaching storm were threatened with severe reprimand and termination.
A former Amazon worker in upstate New York was harassed by Amazon management and eventually fired after publicly protesting against Amazon denying workers time for bathroom breaks during their shifts, another glimpse of the pervasive system of control in Amazon’s warehouses.
Over the last two and a half years, Amazon has forced workers to continue in-person work amidst the raging, deadly and debilitating Coronavirus pandemic. The company admitted that at least 20,000 of its workers were infected in 2020 alone, and it is certain that a substantial number died. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, no doubt are suffering lingering health problems associated with Long Covid. Meanwhile, the corporate behemoth has seen its coffers grow significantly.
However, Amazon is not an evil aberration. It most ruthlessly and openly exemplifies the brutality and callousness of the logistics industry and the entire capitalist system. No matter the job or employer, workers face unsafe working conditions, brutal exploitation, poverty wages, unbearably long working hours, and deliberate exposure to life-threatening viruses. UPS delivery drivers were forced to work long hours in the summer heat without air conditioning in their trucks. Cab temperatures rose to well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit causing workers to fall ill from the unbearable heat. On June 25, 24-year-old UPS driver Esteban Chavez, Jr. collapsed inside his delivery van while working and died from heatstroke. A UPS driver in New York City was reprimanded for taking a 47-second break to sip water amidst an intense heat wave in July.
Last week grieving families, friends and coworkers buried Ben and Max Morrissey, two brothers who leave behind wives and small children, who were killed in a fire at the British Petroleum-Husky oil refinery in Oregon, Ohio. The brothers, who worked side-by-side at the BP refinery, were killed in what is largely seen as a preventable workplace accident, victims of America’s industrial slaughterhouse that sacrifices hundreds of workers daily to the alter of private profit.
Under the capitalist profit system, workers’ lives are expendable, worth less to the ruling capitalist class than the basic machinery and equipment that workers operate. In the eyes of these parasites, workers have one function, to produce profits. Those who die can be quickly replaced with another.
The fight to ensure workplace safety and against oppression requires that workers take matters into their own hands by forming rank-and-file committees, completely independent of the Democratic Party and the pro-company trade union apparatus, which have overseen the decay of working and living conditions and sought to strangle every attempt by the working class to take up an effective fight.
MISERABLE WAGES AND HIGHER TAXES PAID BY LOW INCOME COMPARED TO THE RICH. THERE'S A REASON WHY ALL TECH BILLIONAIRES ARE DEMOCRATS FOR OPEN BORDERS!!!
JOE BIDEN'S CRONY MODERN SLAVER JEFF BEZOS PAYS NO INCOME TAX. OBAMA'S GODFATHER BILLIONAIRE GEORGE SOROS PAYS NO INCOME TAX.
American Workers Are Underpaid, Overworked and Undervalued
Pelosi, through her holdings in local restaurants and vineyards, is reputed to be one of the largest employers of illegal labor in Northern California.
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"America’s elites, now overwhelmingly represented
by the Democratic Party, have a single overriding interest: their
self-indulgent lifestyle."
"Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the twin nutters of Congress, were certain they could beat Trump at his own game, but have made fools of themselves, as usual. The stand-off is not over but with each passing day, the Democrats reveal more of their anti-American, pro-illegal immigration agenda. Conservatives have been sounding the alarm for years: Democrats do not care about American citizens!" PATRICIA McCARTHY
In the next two decades, should the country’s legal immigration policy go unchanged, the U.S. is set to import about 15 million new foreign-born voters. About eight million of these new foreign-born voters will have arrived through the process known as “chain migration,” whereby newly naturalized citizens are allowed to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country. JOHN BINDER
This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations. It also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions. The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces. JOHN BINDER
“Liberal governing has transformed beautiful California into the poverty capital of America with the worst quality of life. Crazy taxes, crazy high cost of living, and crazy overreaching regulations have crushed the middle class, forcing the middle class to exit the Sunshine State. All that is left in California are illegals feeding at the breast of the state, rapidly growing massive homeless tent cities, and the mega-rich.” LLOYD MARCUS
Diary of a socialist Amazon worker: Bezos, the royalist
This is the third entry in the series “Diary of a socialist Amazon worker,” a column authored by Austin Bailey, a socialist-minded worker in his twenties, who has followed the World Socialist Web Site since 2016. Bailey writes this column to reach other workers, especially at Amazon, who have burning questions about the realities of working class life. He is always open to listening to the experiences of other workers, Amazon or otherwise, from anywhere in the world. If you wish to have your story shared, Bailey can be contacted at austin.bailey.diary@gmail.com or found on Twitter as @AustinDiary.
After Queen Elizabeth II died, the media responded with a slew of news articles fawning over the late monarch’s supposed grand legacy. On the other hand, the internet was flooded with just condemnations of the brutal colonial empire she presided over, along with open disdain coupled with outright denunciations of the type of hereditary privilege that has sparked many a revolution in the last two-and-a-half centuries.
Wading into this debate was none other than the founder of the company where I work, mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos, who rushed to the queen’s defense. Bezos denounced the Nigerian-born Carnegie Mellon professor Uju Anya over her tweet celebrating the queen’s death and bitterly invoking the bloody history of the British Empire. One of the top comments, addressed to Bezos was, “Imagine how people will react when it’s your turn.”
For the two weeks, it felt like anywhere you turned, the newspapers and TV news programs were celebrating all the trappings of the British monarchy. Biden ordered all of the American flags to be lowered to half-mast. The New York Times suggested that this was because the American population is “consumed with fascination by the royal family.”
I can testify that at the Amazon warehouse where I work, I have not heard a single worker comment on the queen’s death, let alone praise her to the skies the way she is being praised in the media. The overwhelming attitude is one of indifference. Workers simply have taken no notice of the queen’s passing, consumed as they are with the problems of everyday life.
Many Amazon warehouses are still very hot, including mine. Record inflation is making it increasingly difficult for workers to make ends meet. As if to add insult to injury, the high cost of gasoline places many workers in predicaments where they are unable to travel to work. While massive sums of money were allocated for Elizabeth’s funeral, millions across the globe face hunger and destitution amid a pandemic that continues to claim lives.
All of this begs a few questions, I think. First, why does Bezos, who’s rarely heard from on Twitter, solidarize himself with royal privilege? What kind of legacy did Elizabeth really leave behind and, given its character, is she deserving of the pompous praise heaped upon her of late? Should she be mourned or are tears being wasted?
Let us begin with the larger of the two social parasites: Bezos.
I cannot fully ascertain his psychological motivations, but it is undeniable that the last few years have given all much reason to consider our own mortality. Despite imbecilic proclamations that the COVID-19 pandemic is over, Death has been working overtime, burning the midnight oil to keep pace with the high piles of bodies former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was so keen to endorse. With the current state of public health, it doesn’t look like the grim reaper will get a break anytime soon.
Although I’m convinced Bezos is sure that his time is not nigh (his wealth gives him access to the best medical care possible), it’s clear the monarch’s death has caused a stir in the upper echelons of society. For the most part, the masses have responded to Elizabeth’s death with apathy or antipathy despite efforts by the capitalist press to paint her in the most flattering light possible.
I am sure the vitriol directed towards the British crown, it’s obscene wealth and privilege, has awakened a bit of existential dread in the most affluent layers. Bezos himself is approaching sixty years; he’s at an age the psychologist Erik Erikson believed humans give heavy consideration to their impact on future generations, so perhaps there’s growing worry in Bezos’ mind. Even if this is not the case, I’m certain ruling elites everywhere are losing sleep over the storm brewing in the hearts of the masses.
Frankly, the “legacy” Bezos is currently building for himself is a sordid affair. Amazon warehouses are infamous for being miserable death traps. In a healthy society, Bezos would be put on trial, charged with manslaughter for each of the many deadly accidents that happen too frequently in his company’s facilities. Moreover, his ill-gotten gains could be used to address some of the world’s most pressing issues, including hunger and climate change, but he’d rather take private joy rides to space.
As for the queen, the royal family is mired in scandals—a perfunctory glance at the crown’s history leaves a sour taste in one’s mouth. Her son, Prince Andrew, sold arms to autocratic regimes and paid £12 million to cover up his role in sex trafficking underage girls with Jeffrey Epstein. Prince Harry, her grandson, used to dress up in full Nazi regalia. During the first eight years of Elizabeth II’s reign, the UK carried out savage repression in Kenya against the Mau Mau Rebellion. One may even excuse, or at least understand, Professor Anya’s ill wishes, considering British imperialism secretly supplied weaponry to the Nigerian government during the civil war of the late 1960s.
The worries of today’s moneyed, the sudden concern with how people are spoken of after death reminds me of a robber baron of old, Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie led the brutal expansion of the American steel industry in the 19th century. Towards the end of his life, he became deeply concerned with his soul’s salvation and devoted himself to philanthropy, giving away up to 90 percent of his wealth to fund universities, concert halls, and libraries. Before his philanthropy, however, the industrialist ruled his steel empire with an iron fist (look up the Homestead strike for reference).
Of course, if there were an afterlife, Carnegie, Bezos, and their ilk would be immediately welcomed into Lucifer’s royal court, but the important takeaway, in my mind, is that the existentialism sweeping through the wealthy is indicative of a simple truth: the ruling elites can see the pitchforks on the horizon. Soon, they will discover their adjacency to Lady Macbeth.
Lastly, I would suggest Bezos and others so keen to prostrate themselves before royalty brush up on their history. It was not too long ago, amid the American Revolution, when royalists were tarred and feathered by the Sons of Liberty. Of course, this is a barbaric practice that would never be condoned in modern times (rightfully so), but nevertheless demonstrates the intensity of the anti-monarchical sentiment rooted in the country’s history. And, although the bloody lessons of the 20th century have imbued modern generations with a greater sense of humanity and understanding, like an elephant scorned, the revolutionary masses do not forget.
With appreciation,
Austin Bailey
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