Farrukh Abadi
At midnight on Saturday (12/21), Amazon workers at the Staten Island JFK8 warehouse walked off the job and joined the cross-country Amazon strike. JFK8 is the site of the first union at Amazon, the Amazon Labor Union, which voted earlier this year to affiliate with the Teamsters after two years of stalled negotiations with the $2 trillion e-commerce monopoly. It is also the largest unionized local of Amazon workers, over 5,500 workers strong.
Later in the day, workers at an Amazon air cargo hub in San Bernadino, California also went on strike.
The Amazon strike began Thursday morning across 7 sites in California, Illinois, Georgia, and New York. The Teamsters are also picketing hundreds of Amazon facilities across the country. Volunteers with The Worker in various cities have reported unionization efforts underway at other facilities. Currently, only about 1% of Amazon workers in the US are unionized. Workers are demanding contract negotiations with Amazon for better wages, better benefits, and safer working conditions.
The JFK8 strike began two days after the initiation of the nationwide strike. One worker on the picket line at JFK8 told The Worker that they began their strike on Saturday in order to surprise management, who was expecting it to begin on Thursday. The worker described how, following the initiation of the Thursday strike across the country, Amazon immediately set up fences and amassed a police presence at JFK8 in anticipation of their strike.
Early on during the picket at JFK8, the NYPD threatened mass arrests and confined workers to a barricaded area away from the entrance. The picket had hundreds of workers and supporters at its height during a midday rally.
Strikers have already faced repression from both police and Amazon. At the Queens, NY strike, NYPD arrested two workers on the first day of the picket and barricaded striking workers. On Saturday, Amazon released sewage water from its building into an area where workers and their supporters had set up tents with food and supplies for the picketers.
Photo: Amazon workers and supporters picket JFK8 on Saturday.
