Amazon truck culture dominates public streets for people

 

 

 NY Post

It’s the “law” of the concrete jungle.

Amazon delivery drivers who cause traffic chaos when they commandeer huge stretches of Big Apple streets are getting more brazen, with one claiming that cops gave them license to do so.

“The [NYPD] … said it’s OK to double park here,” said driver Shawn Evans from a frenzied “mobile distribution hub” — a euphemism for the mammoth trucks that double and triple park while workers scurry to unload their contents onto cluttered streets and sidewalks.

Evans said he had been unloading at his location along Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side for more than three hours with a truck containing “1,500 … 1,600” items.

“The NYPD does not allow Amazon delivery vehicles to double park or violate any parking regulations,” a department spokesman countered. “If these vehicles are observed in violation, a summons is issued.”

Evan’s truck was not an outlier. The Post found at least four Amazon delivery trucks hogging up sections of Columbus this week. Some Amazon employees confirmed they had been double-parked for hours.

Many of the the trucks are surrounded by what appear to be city traffic cones — but actually belong to Amazon, multiple delivery men said.

The problem is not unique to the Upper West Side. With its ultra high-density high-rises, the Upper East Side is also uniquely susceptible to Amazon delivery jams. Last November the City Council passed a bill aimed at curbing the issue by introducing loading-only parking spots in affected neighborhoods — but so far results have been limited.

“It is like Whac-A-Mole,” said Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer, adding that trucks would move from one location after a complaint to another. The veteran lawmaker says she has gotten at least 20 constituent complaints about the issue this year.

“It’s an endless challenge,” she said.

Amazon puts a stop to open streets

  

Streetsblog

 Another day, another easily avoidable setback for the city’s open streets program.

In the latest evidence that a tiny minority of increasingly aggressive opponents is seeking to stop the widely popular open space program, North Brooklyn volunteers announced that they are “suspending” their efforts to prop up the city program on Driggs Avenue and Russell Street in Greenpoint after all of the city-owned barricades were stolen by a man with an Amazon-branded van on Monday night.

A video of the apparent Amazon worker stealing the barricades was posted on Nextdoor, a neighborhood-focused website, and downloaded by Streetsblog into a handy video (which we shared with Amazon, which has not responded to our request for comment)

 The open streets suspension — announced in a tweet on Tuesday morning — came on the heels of an earlier two-day suspension after a North Brooklyn volunteer being assaulted, two Department of Transportation workers being berated at a meeting, and equipment was vandalized

 Streetsblog has reached out to the DOT for comment and for an explanation of what comes next for the beleaguered open streets initiative. The program brought miles of recreation space to COVID-stricken neighborhoods during the height of the pandemic, but has lost steam as the mayor has promised that it would be a “permanent” fixture of the cityscape, yet has not announced any plan beyond relying on volunteers.

Transportation Alternatives condemned the theft but said it was easily avoided — if the DOT stepped up its game.

“Open Streets require infrastructure that can’t be stolen, can’t be destroyed, and can’t be tossed aside by entitled motorists,” said Erwin Figueroa, the director of organizing for the safe streets group, which has previously urged the mayor to do better. “Permanent infrastructure is what the Open Streets Coalition has been demanding from City Hall. We need Mayor de Blasio to move with much greater urgency, especially after the violence and vandalism over the past week, to implement the permanent solutions that will secure the success of the program. Any delay will cause these unacceptable incidents to escalate and for an extraordinarily popular program to be jeopardized.”

 If Bikeblog and the bike zealots really want this to stop, they should delete their Amazon accounts. And maybe reach out to the tower people near them and demand they delete theirs too. 

Update: 

Gersh Kuntzmen of Streetsblog deleted all my comments and marked a lot of them as spam for some reason. Even though my comment was visible for about 2 days. Just like with twitter, this sniveling coward and editorialist and even their puny readership will fabricate accusations against anyone having a dissenting opinion to their stories or even to respond to others. Truly sickening times we are living in.

Although Gertz apparently thinks that the comments saying that the guy who removed the barricades was NYPD has unquestionable credibility. My response to this hysterical theory was memory holed because I blamed Amazon.

Pussy.

 

Amazon fires worker after he organized a walkout protesting unsafe work conditions from coronavirus cases inside the warehouse

FOX News

Amazon has fired a worker at its Staten Island, N.Y., warehouse after he helped organize a walkout over the company's coronavirus responses, alleging he put others at risk.

Christian Smalls had demanded that the Jeff Bezos-led company close its Staten Island fulfillment center for a deep cleaning after a worker tested positive for COVID-19 in mid-March. Smalls, along with allegedly more than 100 workers walked off the job at approximately 12:30 p.m. Monday, the New York Post reported.

"There's 10 cases confirmed here and the media only knows about one," Smalls told the news outlet. 

"They have to shut this down. That's all we want."

“Somebody needs to be held accountable,” Smalls added in his interview with the Post. “I saw people get sick every single day. I’ve sent people home with different symptoms, dizziness, vomiting, blood-shot eyes, puffy eyes. I’ve seen it all.”

In a statement obtained by Fox News, an Amazon spokesman said Smalls was terminated because he violated several terms of his employment.

"Mr. Smalls received multiple warnings for violating social distancing guidelines and putting the safety of others at risk," the spokesman said. "He was also found to have had close contact with a diagnosed associate with a confirmed case of COVID-19 and was asked to remain home with pay for 14 days, which is a measure we’re taking at sites around the world. Despite that instruction to stay home with pay, he came onsite today, March 30, further putting the teams at risk. This is unacceptable and we have terminated his employment as a result of these multiple safety issues."

Amazon also disputed that 100 workers walked out. The spokesman said 15 people participated in the demonstration, adding that their employees are "heroes fighting for their communities."

They are calling them heroes. Like they are soldiers in a battle to fulfill prime orders.

Let's hear from an actual one.

Jacobin

Christian Smalls, from Newark, New Jersey, is a thirty-one-year-old assistant manager at the Staten Island Amazon warehouse. The facility, called JFK8, employs nearly five thousand people — and more with each passing week, as mass layoffs send workers onto the job market and Amazon puts them to work delivering packages to those staying home during the economic shutdown.

What’s going on at your workplace?

CS: It’s horrendous. Let me just start from the beginning.

Before we had any confirmed cases in my building, I had pretty much foreseen what was going to happen. I’ve been with the company five years. I opened up every major building in the Tristate — in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. This is my third building over the course of those five years. 

I’ve been with this building since it opened almost two years ago.
So at or around the beginning of March, we had some managers that returned back from Seattle. Seattle is where Amazon has its headquarters, and it was one of the first hot spots in America for the coronavirus outbreak. One of the managers came back, and shortly after that she left because she was sick.

From that point forward, it was just a domino effect. Supervisors were calling out sick. My colleagues were calling out sick. I was sending associates home left and right because they were sick.

Three weeks ago, I took a stand and brought it up to leadership. Like, “Hey, there’s something wrong here. We need to shut this building down and quarantine everyone for two weeks with pay.” They didn’t listen. At that point, I walked out. I said, “I’m not gonna sit here and watch people get sick and y’all do nothing about it.”

I’ve been unpaid ever since, and I’ve been fighting behind scenes. I’ve been calling the health department and the CDC. I’ve sent out numerous emails to the press. I’m trying the best I can to build awareness of this situation.

So fast forward to this week, I decided to go back to work one day to see how things were shaping up, see if they made any safety changes. As soon I got there, around 8:30 in the morning, I ran into my colleague. She looked horrible. Bloodshot red eyes, all puffy. I said, “What are you doing here? You look sick.” She informed me that she went and got tested last night for the coronavirus.

I said, “Wait, you got tested for the coronavirus and they allowed you to come back in the building?” We all know you don’t get the test unless you’re showing severe symptoms. So I sent her home.
Less than an hour later, we had a small managers’ meeting and they informed us that we have one confirmed case. That wasn’t the person I’d run into, she was confirmed later. Instead it was a confirmed case of a person who had started to feel sick the week before. I found this out a little after eleven in the morning, and I was out the door by twelve. On my way out the door, I told as many people as I could to go home.

At this point, I’ve heard of at least seven people who have tested positive.

Why are sick people coming into work?

CS: Because Amazon is not offering paid sick leave. They’re offering unlimited unpaid time off, which is ridiculous because people shouldn’t be forced to sit at home without getting paid for choosing to be safe in quarantine. Since I’ve been off the job, I’ve been taking money out of my 401k just to get by. I shouldn’t have to do that.

 
The way the policy works is that you only get paid quarantine if you get tested and it comes back positive. But we know you can’t even get a test unless you’re really sick, and even then it takes a while to get the results. So you get people who are obviously sick as a dog coming into work.
 
My colleague I told you about before, she’d been to work for the last eight days in a row. There are about 150 people in that department daily. She’d been in contact with the whole entire department. I sent her home on Tuesday and she tested positive on Wednesday.
She’d been in contact with so many people, and the only person they ended up giving quarantine to was me.

Wait, you haven’t tested positive for the virus. Why did they quarantine you?

CS: Because I’m being rebellious right now. I’ve been coming to the building, bringing groups of ten or twenty people to the general manager’s office to voice our concerns. They decided to cut off the head of the snake. They quarantined me as of yesterday. So I’m getting paid now, but I don’t even care about the money. At this point I’m just trying to organize. I’m just doing what I feel is right.

I’m looking at a quote from an Amazon spokesperson who says, “We are following all guidelines from local health officials and are taking extreme measures to ensure the safety of employees at our site.” Is that true?

CS: That’s absolutely false. These spokespeople that they have talking to the press are sugarcoating everything. They don’t know a damn thing about what’s going on in these buildings. They’re even downplaying the number of positive cases confirmed.

 
Everything the company is doing is reactive, not proactive. The tables were still together two weeks ago. They just started separating them when I brought it up to their attention. Now they want to start taking temperatures at the door. The virus has been in the building for weeks, and now you want to take temperatures?
 
What is the purpose? What is it that we’re doing that’s worth the risk? Jeff Bezos is saying we’re like the Red Cross, but we still have a large amount of inventory that is being sold to the public that is non-essential. Even on essential items, if we’re all carrying the virus while we’re handling all these packages, I’m not really sure we’re helping people. We’re touching metal, plastic, and cardboard all day long, all things we know the virus can survive on, and shipping out packages to thousands and thousands of people.
 
Jeff Bezos says we’re helping the community. We’re keeping business going, but that’s all. We’re putting our lives on the line for that. My job description says have a high school diploma and lift fifty pounds. It doesn’t say risk my life working during a pandemic.
 
I always thought Jeff Bezos was a good CEO up until this point. He dropped the ball. These Amazon buildings need to be shut down immediately. We have almost 5,000 people at JFK8. You do the math. If they don’t shut it down, this is the epicenter of the next coronavirus wave right here.

Woodside Amazon warehouse worker tested positive for COVID-19, tells night shift to show up for work anyway

The Atlantic

Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Queens, New York, received a text Wednesday evening that they long feared might come: “We’re writing to let you know that a positive case of the coronavirus (COVID-19) was found at our facility today.”

This is the realization of a major threat to Amazon’s operations. Millions of people across the nation are cloistered inside their homes, many of them relying on the company to provide basic goods. 

Amazon is already struggling to meet demand, and some employees feel they’re being unfairly endangered by working in warehouses filled with other workers. It’s unclear how deliveries could continue if the workers who sort, pack, and ship Americans’ goods start getting sick in droves.

Though two office workers at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters have been diagnosed with COVID-19, this is the first confirmed case of the disease among the company’s hourly warehouse employees in the United States. These workers make up the majority of Amazon’s 600,000-strong workforce.
According to the text, which was sent by a member of a workers’ group called Amazonians United, management sent day-shift workers home in order to disinfect the sorting facility, known as DBK1. Jonathan Bailey, an employee who sorts packages at the Queens facility, told me that workers were not notified of the positive case by Amazon management; he learned of it from other employees. He said workers believed that they were still expected to report for their night shift. In an email to The Atlantic, Amazon denied this, saying that it notified all associates about the positive test, and that workers were not expected to come in for their night shift.

Rena Lunak, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed to The Atlantic that there was a positive case at the facility, but did not reveal the person’s identity. “We are supporting the individual who is now in quarantine,” she said. “In addition to our enhanced daily deep cleaning, we’ve temporarily closed the Queens delivery station for additional sanitation and have sent associates home with full pay.”

The incident rattled some of the warehouse workers, who already feel they are being underpaid for a risky job: continuing to work in close proximity to others during a dangerous pandemic. “This clearly shows a disregard for our health and safety,” said Bailey, who is also a member of Amazonians United.

On March 11, Amazon announced that all employees diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed in quarantine would receive two weeks of sick pay. In addition, Amazon gave hourly workers unlimited unpaid time off through the end of March.

But some Amazon workers—including those in New York City, where positive cases have spiked sharply in the past 48 hours—have expressed concern that these measures have been insufficient to protect them from the coronavirus. As of this writing, there are 1,871 known cases of the coronavirus in the city, and officials expect that number to rise dramatically. What’s more, research suggests that the virus can live on cardboard for 24 hours, so there’s a possibility that packages sick employees send may be contagious.

Amazon takes over K-Mart/Toys 'R' Us former spaces at the Renter Plaza Mall

QNS

Just over a year after Amazon scuttled its plans to build a massive HQ2 campus in Long Island City, and create 25,000 jobs, the e-commerce giant has signed a new lease for space in Middle Village.

Amazon is taking roughly 300,000 square feet of space in Rentar Plaza, located at 66-26 Metropolitan Ave., according to the loan database TreppWire.

“I am thrilled to hear that Amazon has signed a lease at Rentar Plaza, which is in desperate need of revitalization,” Councilman Robert Holden said. “I actually suggested this location to Amazon two years ago. My hope is that this brings hundreds more jobs and renewed commercial activity to the area, which will be extremely valuable to our community for years to come.”

The Real Deal reports that Amazon will be taking over the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 109,000-square-foot space, plus the remaining 190,000 square feet of vacant space on the property.

QNS reached out to Amazon and is awaiting its response. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s lease was set to expire in July, and the Amazon lease brings Rentar Plaza to full occupancy, the Real Deal reports.

The city of New York is the property’s largest tenant with more than 500,000 square feet of space occupied by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

Amazon is also in talks for a giant distribution center in Maspeth at the old Cascades 

Containerboard factory on Grand Avenue. That property was recently acquired by a California-based company called LBA Realty for $72 million and the deal involves a partnership with RXR to build a four-story warehouse that would be ideal for the “last mile” of logistics for the e-commerce company.

Albany and New York City offered more corporate welfare to Amazon

Marketscreener


State officials offered Amazon.com Inc. almost a billion dollars more of incentives than was previously known to win its second-headquarters contest and were even prepared to pay part of some employees' salaries if the tech company developed a campus in New York.

Documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show the scope of what state and local officials initially put on the table as part of the 2017 HQ2 competition, in which more than 200 cities submitted bids to host a facility that Amazon said would house 50,000 jobs.

The company said in November 2018 that sites in Northern Virginia and the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens would split the new headquarters. New York state and city officials agreed to give $3 billion of incentives to the e-commerce giant to hire as many as 40,000 employees.
Facing opposition from some local elected officials, Amazon abandoned its plans for New York on Valentine's Day last year.

The Journal obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Law request to Empire State Development, the state's economic development authority.

The documents show that in its first formal bid to Amazon, in October 2017, the state offered to provide up to $2.5 billion of incentives to the company for a campus in New York. The offer also applied to sites that state and local leaders proposed in the Hudson Valley, Albany, Central New York, Buffalo, Rochester and on Long Island.

The state's initial offer included $1.4 billion of tax credits based on the number of employees hired and $1.1 billion of various grants. That was $800 million more than the ESD agreed to in a memorandum of understanding signed a year later: The state provided $1.2 billion of tax credits and $505 million to reimburse some construction costs. 

Before Long Island City was selected, different New York localities made site-specific incentive offers. Nassau County officials offered $2.2 billion in tax exemptions to build a facility at the Belmont Park.
On top of the state's final $1.7 billion package, New York City ultimately offered Amazon up to $1.3 billion of extra incentives through two programs open to any company.

Officials also presented alternative campus sites, including near the World Trade Center in lower
Manhattan, on the island's West Side near Penn Station and in downtown Brooklyn. The city proposed that Governors Island, a former Coast Guard base between Manhattan and Brooklyn, could serve as an "island retreat" for Amazon employees.

ESD initially proposed to spend $500 million to create a Center for Commercial Innovation near the selected site that would let Amazon partner with various colleges for research relevant to its business. The site would also subsidize job-training programs, according to the proposal, and the state pledged to pay 25% of certain graduates' first-year wages with Amazon to help it achieve workforce diversity.

Staten Island Amazon warehouse workers demand fulfillment benefits, services and safety provisions

NY Post

Workers at Amazon’s Staten Island packing facility say Jeff Bezos deserves a lump of coal in his stocking for running roughshod over them, especially during the busy holiday season.

Over a hundred Amazon workers and their supporters gathered outside the facility on Monday to protest working conditions that they say only worsen as the e-tailing giant gears up to deliver a rush of packages ahead of Christmas and Hanukkah.

The workers, who gathered outside the warehouse around 5:30 p.m., carried signs, chanted slogans and demanded a manager emerge from the building to accept a petition signed by 600 people — and addressed to Amazon chief executive Bezos, tied for richest man in the world with Bill Gates.

Their petition demands longer work breaks and more dedicated MTA buses to the far-flung facility. It also protests newly released injury data showing that the rate of worker injury at the facility is three times higher than similar warehouse work.

“It has become clear that our safety is a secondary concern in your eyes, lagging far behind line speed,” the petition said. “There are only weak plans in place to prevent more pain, more injuries, and more deaths as we enter the hardest time of the year,” the letter said.

Amazon’s eyebrow-raising injury rates at the warehouse, which opened in 2018, where released Monday by labor advocacy group Make the Road New York based on Amazon’s own submissions to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Among the injuries reported were sprains and strains from pushing, pulling and lifting machinery and merchandise.

And because the facility is kept at an overly warm temperature, workers sometimes pass out from overheating, said Frank Kearl, staff attorney for Make the Road.

“There are serious structural problems in the way that facility is operating,” Kearl said.

Former de Blasio aide was paid to bolster quasi city government office Economic Development Corporation and its president after Amazon bailed from deal

THE CITY

Just a dozen days after Amazon announced this winter that it would pull out of plans for a Queens headquarters in the face of raucous opposition, the local authority that had helped forge the deal sought help from a familiar face, emails obtained by THE CITY show.

Andrea Hagelgans, the de Blasio admininistration’s former communications chief, got a message from the NYC Economic Development Corporation chief of staff James Katz on Feb. 26 requesting a phone call about a “potential engagement.”

That engagement — cemented in April at $80,000 for four months’ work — was a reputational rescue led by Hagelgans at the public relations firm Edelman, which she’d joined in 2018 after leaving her City Hall job.

Her team signed up to lead a course correction in Amazon’s aftermath, the correspondence shows. It would enhance EDC’s existing press operation, rehabilitate the corporation’s wounded image and win future land-use fights against community and political opponents.

EDC spokeswoman Stephanie Báez characterized the hiring of Edelman as nothing out of the ordinary. “EDC carries out dozens of complicated projects that require time and attention,” she said. 

“As in the past, we’ve taken the straightforward step of engaging outside help to assist with capacity and strategic support.”

She did not answer questions about total billing, whether the contract would be extended or renewed or if the work was ongoing.

Edelman declined to comment.

 The Edelman proposal from March, released to THE CITY under a Freedom of Information request, describes EDC’s “most urgent needs” as “capacity building and the preparations needed to weather and win critical land use fights.”

“We have designed a program that we believe meets your immediate needs while propelling NYCEDC forward as you work to shape the future of NYC for its residents,” Hagelgans wrote in an email to Katz.

The proposal also aimed to elevate EDC President James Patchett in the public eye, “building executive visibility.”

 The objectives included positioning Patchett “as a fierce advocate for business growth and development,” and creating a “playbook outlining a strong defense to political or community-related attacks surrounding high-profile land use fights and other reputation risks.”

The strategy involved a “systematic, rapid-response approach to effectively navigate political and community-related opposition that could slow or stall progress” on such deals.