by Samuel Messidor
About 40 workers organizing under the Amazon Labor Union at Amazon’s sprawling Hebron, KY air hub walked off the job last Wednesday in protest of the company’s ongoing union-busting at the facility.
The workers acknowledged in statements to monopoly media that the walk-out represented a small fraction of the employees at the facility, but said they staged the brief strike to show their coworkers that they do not need to fear the company and its retaliation. An Amazon spokeswoman said production was unaffected at the facility, indicating that the company likely employed scabs to fill in for the 40-odd workers who walked off the job for the day.
The Hebron workers have been fighting a running battle with Amazon since they started organizing in 2022, and have recently affiliated with the Teamsters in their showdown with the logistics giant. For its part, the company says the walkout is the result of “outside agitators”. The Amazon spokeswoman did not specify who these outsiders were. Teamsters drivers visited the picket line from their own strike in Skokie, Illinois, but these are hardly outsiders to their fellow workers. The working class has a different definition and view of the outside agitator than the ruling class.
About 100 workers at a smaller air hub in San Bernadino, CA also walked off the job a week before the Kentucky workers, citing similar grievances against Amazon. The CA workers had walked off the job before, in 2022 over unsafe working conditions including Amazon’s paltry heat safety measures and denial of legally-entitled breaks.
Amazon is currently under investigation by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over the Hebron workers’ claims that they have been harassed, spied on, and retaliated against for exercising their right to organize and fight for better working conditions. Amazon has joined with Tesla and other corporations in legal attempts to declare the NLRB unconstitutional.
The $1.5 billion Hebron air hub employs about 2000 workers. The Kentucky government gave Amazon a $40 million tax incentive in 2017 to build their air hub there, with $4 million in tax breaks on an ongoing yearly basis for ensuring certain employment levels and pay. While tax money from working people is redirected by the state to pay millions of dollars to billionaires, workers suffer back-breaking work tempos and high rates of injury. A newly-released Senate study shows 45% of Amazon workers were injured in relation to Prime Day in 2019, similar to its injury rates during the holiday season.
