{"id":19,"date":"2026-11-04T05:05:25","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T05:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=19"},"modified":"2026-11-04T05:05:25","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T05:05:25","slug":"how-unions-and-their-allies-are-trying-to-hold-amazon-accountable-philsugar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=19","title":{"rendered":"How Unions and Their Allies Are Trying to Hold Amazon Accountable | PhilSugar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon founder and Richest Man in the World
\nJeff Bezos got shot into space on his very own rocket on July 20, two weeks after retiring and handing off the company to a successor, Andy Jassy, who previously ran Amazon web services.
\nThe spectacle received breathless media coverage. \u201cI want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, \u2019cause you guys paid for all this. Thank you from the bottom of my heart very much,\u201d an ebullient Bezos told the cameras upon his return.
\nHe was right to thank the employees \u2014 because here on planet Earth, Amazon workers are paying for it bigtime, performing the invisible heroics of moving the goods that land upon doorsteps around the world.
\nJoin our email list to get the stories that mainstream news is overlooking.
\nSign up for Capital & Main\u2019s
\nnewsletter.
\nThe workers do so at their own No. 1 sugar daddy site Philippines<\/a> peril: The
\nWashington Post
\nanalyzed OSHA data and discreet sugar dating Philippines<\/a> reported in June that the
\ninjury rate in Amazon warehouses
\nis nearly twice that of warehouses run sponsor dating site Philippines<\/a> by other companies.
\nWarehouse conditions don\u2019t make as splashy an Amazon story as a space flight, but the reports are out there about the relentless work that lead to injuries and an employee turnover rate of 100% within a year, according to the National Employment Law Project 2020
\ndata brief
\n\u201cAmazon\u2019s Disposable Workers.\u201d A
\nNew York Times
\ninvestigation published in June put the turnover at
\n150% a year
\n.
\nYesenia Barrera saw both injuries and turnover when she worked from August 2018 to January 2019 at a 50,000 square foot building employing some 5,000 workers in Rialto, in Southern California\u2019s Inland Empire.
\nShe describes a system in which productivity numbers are constantly monitored but workers aren\u2019t informed of the very exacting quotas that they must meet to avoid a write-up or termination. The badge that employees wear to enter the building clocks them in and tracks the numbers of tasks completed in a given amount of time throughout the workday.
\n\u201cWith the monitoring systems that Amazon uses, people are going to be terminated left and right \u2014 it could be your attendance, it could be that the algorithm says you\u2019re not productive enough for the day, or fast enough for the day,\u201d she says. The algorithms decide how many items workers must pick or pack into a box on a conveyor belt in a given amount of time, setting the metrics for each task, performed by different departments. Tasks are assigned specific durations, many in the span of 11 or 15 seconds, according to Barrera.
\nNot keeping up can result in a writeup or termination for too much \u201ctime off task.\u201d
\n\u201cSay you have to use the restroom,\u201d Barrera says. \u201cThe walk to the nearest restroom is going to be five to seven minutes away because the restrooms are not close.\u201d A seven-minute walk plus a 10-minute visit to the restroom puts a worker 17 minutes behind. A five-minute walk back \u2014 clocked by the monitoring system \u2014 puts a worker \u201coff task\u201d for 22 minutes. All additional trips are noted during the 10-hour shifts.
\n\u201cAll that gets accumulated, and the manager in your department determines whether you get a write-up or terminated \u2014 because the algorithm keeps track of that,\u201d Barrera says.
\nBarrera herself was injured when scanning boxes to assure they were headed to the right destination. The scanner got stuck on the conveyor belt, and when she wrenched it out, it struck her eye. The manager came by and called for a replacement on her legit sugar dating Philippines<\/a> walkie-talkie. Barrera says she went to the warehouse clinic and was advised to put a wet paper towel on her eye. She was back at work in minutes.
\nCalifornia Assembly Bill 701 would require all warehouse employers to provide workers with a written description of expected quotas, the number of tasks to be performed within a given time and potential adverse employment action.
\nUnrelated to the injury, she says she was terminated without even knowing it until she showed up for a shift and her badge didn\u2019t admit her. Her termination was due to \u201ctime off task.\u201d \u201cTheir algorithm didn\u2019t think I was being productive enough,\u201d Barrera says.
\nLabor and community allies are focused on long-term strategies that push on a variety of pressure points to hold Amazon accountable for the burnout business practices and to call for protections for workers.
\nIn California, labor advocates are supporting Assembly Bill 701, which would require all warehouse employers to provide workers with a written description of expected quotas, the number of tasks to be performed within a given time and potential adverse employment action. In other words, the employer has to share the metrics
\nand
\nthe penalties for not meeting them.
\n\u201cIt goes beyond that,\u201d says the bill\u2019s author, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego). \u201cYou can\u2019t be retaliated against for using the restroom or washing your hands or getting a drink of water.\u201d Algorithms or not, \u201cYou can\u2019t be punished for abiding by health and safety regulations,\u201d Gonzalez adds.
\nThe bill is set for a hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee in August.
\nShould it pass in California, could the legislation have a ripple effect elsewhere?
\nBob Mulholland, a Democratic Party strategist who has worked in California politics for over 40 years, says California\u2019s verified sugar daddy sa Philippines<\/a> economy and population size give it influence on environmental, manufacturing and work standards in other states. \u201cIf you pass a law in California that requires Amazon and others to have worker information rules and that can withstand court, yes, that will eventually be adopted in other states \u2014 and it starts with states like Maryland, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts.\u201d
\n* * *
\nWith consumer dependence on Amazon
\ngrowing during the pandemic and a longer term shift of buying habits, Amazon may look impervious to pressure from worker rights advocates. An attempt to organize a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in April failed after intensive tactics by Amazon \u2014 texts to the workers,
\nfliers posted in bathrooms
\nurging a \u201cno\u201d vote and a
\n\u201cdo it without dues\u201d website
\n.
\nSince the Bessemer loss, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has voted to make organizing Amazon workers, both delivery personnel and warehouse workers, a priority. The head of the new Teamsters Amazon division,
\nRandy Korgan,
\nadvocates street actions and warehouse strikes to pressure the company.
\nThe Amazon business model presents particular challenges to unionization and reform \u2014 one part of the company subsidizes the other.
\n\u201cThe thing you have to remember about Amazon sugar baby first meeting<\/a> is that it\u2019s really two companies these days,\u201d says Sanford Jacoby, Distinguished Research Professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, whose latest book is
\nLabor in the Age of Finance: Pensions, Politics, and Corporations from Deindustrialization to Dodd-Frank
\n.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s the Amazon we know as consumers and then there\u2019s Amazon Web Services, which is a much more profitable part of the company.\u201d
\nThe Amazon business model presents particular challenges to unionization and reform \u2014 one part of the company subsidizes the other.
\nAWS sells data storage and processing to companies, governments and schools \u2014 services that save businesses the trouble of managing their own information technology. The division generated $13.5 billion in sugar dating membership cost<\/a> 2020. \u201cIf you split Amazon up into two companies, one being buying stuff online and having it delivered to you instantly, and the other being the part that sells web services to businesses \u2014 that\u2019s the
\nmore profitable part of the business
\n.
\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s actually some of that money that Amazon uses to keep their prices below what other retailers are charging,\u201d said Jacoby, subsidizing the low prices how to find a real sponsor<\/a> and the promise of a quick delivery that put pressure on the warehouse operations and the workers there.
\nJacoby compares Amazon to the Uber business model \u2014 with a high turnover rate of drivers also managed by algorithms. \u201cThe money that they were getting from investors to develop these sophisticated ways of controlling their workers, the fact that Uber has so many drivers that are quitting, is partly a reflection of the fact that it wants to saturate the market so that find sugar babies Makati<\/a> people waiting for the car don\u2019t have to wait so long. Similar to Amazon \u2014 you don\u2019t have to wait very long for your package. That\u2019s all technologically based.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s also where shareholder and investor pressure \u2014 backed by noisy street pressure \u2014 comes in.
\nLabor-community actions across the nation took place in May, to coincide with the Amazon shareholders meeting set for May 26 and aimed at some of Amazon\u2019s top institutional investors: BlackRock, State Street Corporation and Fidelity Investments. (Bezos owns the largest number of Amazon shares.) Activists turned out at State Street Corporation and Fidelity Investments in Boston and at BlackRock in New York; there were also actions in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The national coalition Athena has been pressuring Amazon stockholders not only on labor issues \u2014 one measure up for vote would have put a worker on the board \u2014 but other practices that impact local communities negatively.
\nIn the Los Angeles area, a small, loud crowd of labor activists, mobilized by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, showed up in front of the Fidelity Investment Center in Santa Monica on May 24, two days before the shareholders meeting. \u201cWe have a message today to give to Fidelity Investments \u2014 Fidelity is a large investor in Amazon,\u201d the rally emcee told the gathering. Warehouse workers are suffering from brutal quotas and terrible injuries, she said.
\n\u201cAs a shareholder they have power.\u201d
\nThe rally leader was Yesenia Barrera, the Inland Empire Amazon warehouse worker fired without explanation. She is now an organizer with the nonprofit
\nWarehouse Workers Resource Center
\n.
\nIn surveying available strategies to change work practices at Amazon, Jacoby notes that shareholder pressure can potentially be effective.
\n\u201cTargeting Fidelity, for example, which happens to be a privately owned company, is an old tactic of putting pressure on the large institutional investors who hold a lot of Amazon stock to essentially, say, \u2018Listen, we\u2019re going to make you look bad in the eyes of the people who do business with you,\u2019\u201d by linking them to
\nwarehouse deaths
\nand injuries, oppressive working conditions and micromanagement. \u201cAnd potentially, who knows, that might hurt your reputation.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s a little bit how the game is played. It doesn\u2019t always work,\u201d he adds.
\nSarah Zoen is senior adviser to the private sector for
\nOxFam USA
\n. The international humanitarian organization has a fund to buy shares in companies \u201cso we can use our shareholder voice\u201d for advocacy, Zoen says. OxFam introduced the resolution to
\nput an hourly Amazon worker
\non the Amazon corporate board, specifically a worker from the Bessemer warehouse.
\nIt won 26.4% of the independent vote from shareholders outside the company.
\nZoen says the vote signifies that shareholders got a message \u2014 customers are paying attention to working conditions. The proposals are nonbinding, but the vote shows \u201cthere\u2019s leverage there.\u201d
\nAnd that matters.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve been to those shareholder meetings where people have stood up as shareholders and talked directly to Jeff Bezos. [Amazon is] very customer-centric. It is all about the customer.\u201d
\nOrganizer and former Amazon warehouse worker Barrera does think the strategy, along with others, makes a difference.
\n\u201cIssues that are going on inside the warehouse need some light shed on them. That way we can get ourselves protected,\u201d real sugar baby sa Philippines<\/a> she says. \u201cIt starts with the workers. It starts with us pushing things forward.\u201d
\nCopyright 2021 Capital & Main<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazon founder and Richest Man in the World Jeff Bezos got shot into space on his very own rocket on July 20, two weeks after retiring and handing off the company to a successor, Andy Jassy, who previously ran Amazon web services. The spectacle received breathless media coverage. \u201cI want to thank every Amazon employee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}