Walking out on Amazon because they lying to us,
not caring about our health or safety.
We want better equipment, protective gear.
We have no masks.
We want hazard pay.
If I lose my job, I lose my job.
I shouldn't be speaking like this, but I don't care.
I don't care, I don't give a anymore
cause I'm scared too.
In the middle of this coronavirus crisis,
I am obviously one of the lucky ones.
I can just get my work done at home on a laptop
with my tiny coworker, Liam, here, who's four months old.
But obviously there are many, many people in this country
who aren't in that position
who still have to go to jobs at grocery stores,
warehouses, factories, etc.
It's a little hard to tell exactly how many people
are still going to those kinds of jobs,
but the Brookings Institution estimates
that before the COVID crisis,
there were as many as 62 million people in those jobs,
and no doubt many of them are still going to work.
And what started to happen in recent days
is since those jobs have become a lot more risky,
some of those workers are starting to strike
for better working conditions.
In the past couple weeks, we've seen walk-outs
at Purdue, at McDonald's, at InstaCart,
at Whole Foods, at Amazon.
There is this national and global crisis,
which is being experienced in a particularly acute way
in a number of work places that many people in America
have not thought of those places where workers
have much leverage.
And some of the calculation that workers make
about whether it's worth confronting the boss,
whether it's worth acting collectively,
that calculation is shifted when people have real fears
about it being dangerous to come into work
if they don't have changes made.
Workers at an Amazon warehouse facility
on Staten Island are staging a walkout today.
They're complaining about the fact that their facility
has not been cleaned out since a worker there
tested positive.
They think up to six other workers
may have tested positive as well,
and they want Amazon to close down that distribution center
for a period of time, have it entirely sanitized.
Tell me a little bit more about the Amazon situation.
We've heard about a lot about this Staten Island warehouse,
but I guess there's a couple other locations as well.
There've now been walkouts at Amazon warehouses
in Staten Island, in Chicago, and in Michigan.
In each of these cases, you have workers saying
the company is not doing enough to keep them safe.
I'm doing this because of my health
and my fellow workers as well.
It should be closed down.
It should be cleaned properly.
The key complaint they had was around
what the workers thought was a lack of transparency
around just how they were being told
about positive COVID cases within their workforce.
They say sometimes it took too long,
so they walked out over it,
and pressed management with some demands
about sick pay should they get the virus
and that kind of thing.
If you have sick employees at your job,
and they pass the coronavirus down to your customers,
what are you gonna say then?
We need that protection as well.
We need to know that, we want to feel safe while working.
And that's it.
Amazon released a statement on the day of the walkout
saying that the protestors accusations were unfounded,
and saying we have taken extreme measures
to keep people safe, tripling down on deep cleaning,
procuring safety supplies that are available,
and changing processes to ensure that those in our buildings
are keeping safe distances.
Amazon also offers an example of one of the challenges
for this worker pushback.
A leader of the strike in Staten Island,
the same day that the strike happened
was terminated by Amazon.
We had a successful walkout.
We got the message out.
We got people aware, that's what we here for.
Amazon says they weren't retaliating
for raising safety concerns.
They were actually enforcing safety rules,
but that strike leader says he was being punished
for standing up for his coworkers.
The question of what happens to workers who stand up
and whether those protests become inspirations
or cautionary tales about how you can get yourself
in an even worse situation is crucial.
And people are going to take mixed messages
from some of these examples.
Let's talk about the situation with Whole Foods.
Tell me about what's been going on there.
To add to the strike parade, I guess, at Amazon,
which owns Whole Foods, their workers or a subset of them
started holding a sick-out on Tuesday
where folks called in sick.
They were asking for better protections on sales floors.
Some folks had wanted to wear masks in recent weeks,
and they cited some fuzzy guidance from management on that,
and just again, the general feeling that
if something were to happen to them,
they want guarantees from management
that they'd have their costs covered
or be able to care for family members.
Myself and all the Whole Foods employees
need to keep putting as much pressure on them as possible
to make these changes for the employees, the customers,
and the public health, and the good of the company, frankly.
Paid sick leave, reimbursement for testing,
hazard pay, and a firm policy for shutting down stores
when an employee tests positive for COVID-19.
All these things have big implications for safety,
not just for the employees, but for the customers
and the public health at large.
Have you heard about any changes that the company
is going to make in response to this action?
I have not, no.
We don't know exactly how many people called out sick,
but we talked to workers in Illinois, New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas
who said that they did that on Tuesday.
The company says its operations weren't affected.
Stores remained open.
Those Whole Foods and Amazon strikes
are really just the tip of the iceberg.
In the past week and a half or so,
we've seen demonstrations by employees
at a Purdue chicken plant in Georgie,
sanitation workers in Pittsburgh,
and GE factory workers in Massachusetts,
all basically advocating for similar things,
safer, more sanitary work conditions.
Although in the case of GE, those workers are also
trying to get their company to switch over
to more manufacturing of ventilators for hospitals.
Workers at McDonald's are also getting in on the action
in several states led by the advocacy organization,
Fight for $15.
We was told, we're not to wear masks or gloves by the GM
here at McDonald's.
She was told by McDonald's we're not supposed
to use masks.
And the reason we're out here today
is because we wondering what they're gonna do
about our safety.
Right now, they're doing nothing.
So, is any of this having an effect?
Well, in some cases it seems like the answer
is a cautious yes.
Just in the past couple days, we've seen McDonald's
announce that they're going to introduce
better safety practices, and that they're even considering
hazard pay for some workers.
And Amazon has announced that starting early next week,
it's going to be handing out masks to all its employees
and doing temperature checks
at all of its warehouse locations.
So it seems like some of these workers at least
are starting to get some of what they want.
The question now for many labor organizers
is can these short-term concessions be parlayed
into more permanent change for American labor?
What's going on now creates an opening
for various kinds of organizing
that might not've been there before.
We will know more in the weeks and months ahead
about how much these protests change things,
and to what extent they lead to changes
that outlast the coronavirus,
and to what extent they can lead to organization
and leverage for workers that outlast this current,
very unusual moment.