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.

Waterfront library's opening pushed back to 2019

From LIC Post:

Construction on the the Hunters Point Library is delayed once more, and is expected to be completed in August 2018 with a possible opening in 2019.

The update on the $40 million project was announced on Dec. 18, when the Department of Design and Construction and the Queens Public Library testified on the progress of several library projects during the City Council Subcommittee on Libraries meeting, chaired by Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Long Island City).

“It is a unique design,” Walcott said at the meeting. “When we talk about outfitting a normal library it can be three to four months. With Hunters Point we are saying six months.”

Van Bramer questioned the DDC and the QPL on the series of “horrific” mistakes that have led to the project’s multiple delays, including the fiasco involving the glass used for the library’s windows.

The architect, Steven Holl, insisted that a specific type of glass be used for the building due to its lighting and heat features. The glass chosen was manufactured in Germany, glazed in Spain, and eventually exported to Connecticut before reaching Long Island City. The glass was held up in Spain, however, due to a strike by dock workers at a port.

Only "under two years" of additional delays? It's a Festivus miracle!

Pols side with Spectrum strikers and not their victims

From CBS 2:

Thousands of union workers rallied in both Downtown Brooklyn and Foley Square in Lower Manhattan in Monday, in support of the striking Spectrum cable workers.

Cuomo and de Blasio are offering fiery rhetoric.

“It’s about respect and fairness,” Cuomo said.

But the residents and businesses on Austin Street in Forest Hills, Queens want fairness and respect too. It is one of many neighborhoods hit by massive outages in their cable, internet and phone services when the workers walked off the job on March 28.

There have been about 100 attacks on the fiber optics system – acts of vandalism that have left thousands and thousands inconvenienced since the strike began.

“I assume there’s some kind of money involved,” said Bareburger manager Adam Bariando. “As a person who campaigned talking about the people; the working class, I would expect him to side with us.”

Unions say there were more jobs for them under Bloomberg

From the Observer:

More than 100 unionized construction workers, labor brass and members of community activist groups rallied with 10 workers who claimed unsafe and abusive conditions led them to walk off the job at affordable housing projects—projects receiving city subsidies under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambitious affordable housing plan.

The rally included Iron Workers and District Council of Painters members as well as liberal minority groups like New York Communities for Change, and kicked off outside the Bronx County Courthouse before marching to two nearby city-subsidized building sites employing the controversial subcontractor U.S. Crane and Rigging. The demonstration marked the latest development in an ongoing conflict between the organized building trades and Mr. de Blasio over the mayor’s claims that requiring union wages and benefits would make many below-market housing projects financially unfeasible.

“De Blasio has turned his back on the working people, that’s the way we see it,” Eddie Jorge, an organizer for the Iron Workers union, told the Observer—arguing that more subsidized projects under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg used union labor than under the current administration.

The workers, most of them not fluent in English, claimed to have worked on several U.S Crane and Rigging jobs on affordable residential projects around the city. Those who spoke with the Observer described round-the-clock shifts without breaks for food or rest, insults from supervisors, insufficient safety equipment, not being fully compensated for hours worked and threats that the company would respond to complaints with termination or suspension.

LGA workers strike over lack of Ebola protection

From NY Magazine:

About 200 Air Serv employees at La Guardia's Terminal D have staged a strike amid concerns about the spread of Ebola. Air Serv workers are responsible for cleaning the cabins of aircrafts between flights.

The strike started Wednesday night and is supposed to last for 24 hours. The workers say they're regularly exposed to gross bodily fluids left behind by plane passengers, and they don't have the necessary protective gear to fend off Ebola.

Union strike may grind building to a halt

From Crains:

With a contract deadline a week away, a survey of developers has found that a work stoppage by operating engineers could silence construction on private-sector projects worth nearly $10 billion and temporarily idle more than 11,300 workers.

With the operating engineers' union contracts set to expire June 30, the Real Estate Board of New York survey shows that work could stop on commercial and retail projects spanning more than 13 million square feet and on residential sites totaling more than 6,300 units.

Projects that could be halted include Forest City Ratner's Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which employs 1,000 construction workers; Silverstein Properties' World Trade Center Tower 4, which employs 800; and Extell Development Co.'s International Gem Tower in midtown, which employs 500.

Get ready for a long, hot summer!

From Crain's:

Workers at the Ravenswood Power Plant in Long Island City—which can generate about 2,500 megawatts of power a day—say they’ll walk off their jobs if they don’t have a new contract by 12:01 a.m. on Thursday. Union officials say “zero progress” has been made in talks with owner TransCanada and that management has yet to present them with the proposed length of a contract.

A spokesman for TransCanada, which bought Ravenswood from National Grid in October for $3.1 billion, would not comment on specifics of the negotiations, but insisted the plant would continue to operate in the event of a work stoppage. “We do have a contingency plan in place,” he said, though he would not provide specifics of the plan. “As a result there will be no disruption in operation.”

Union officials argued Ravenswood would not be able to run for more than a day or two without their members. “The notion that TransCanada can keep the plant running…is just pure nonsense,” President Harry Farrell said in a statement.

The strike would occur at a time when the city is expected to go through one of its warmest spells of the year, boosting demand for electricity—and, potentially, the union’s bargaining power. Temperatures are forecast to approach 90 degrees on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, according to Jay Searles, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University.

A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg did not respond to requests for comment on any action the city may be taking.

As swine flu spreads, nurses may strike

From NY1:

At Queens Hospital Center in Jamaica, they have so many people flooding their emergency room that they had to set up a tent to handle the overflow.

"We have been able to reduce from having approximately 140 patients, roughly about 50/50 in terms of children and adults to maybe about 20 patients now," said Queens Hospital Center Executive Director George Proctor.

Hospitals throughout Queens and other affected areas have been saying ER waits have been anywhere between two to six hours to see a doctor.

And from the Daily News:

A Queens hospital could soon be facing a strike by more than 700 of its registered nurses after a new round of contract talks hit an impasse, the Daily News has learned.

New York Hospital Queens in Flushing and 722 of its registered nurses returned to the bargaining table April 22, following a cooling-off period that elected officials brokered in February to avert a planned three-day strike.

But the latest round of talks appear to have broken off after a committee of nurses - whose contract expired Oct. 31 - walked out of a bargaining meeting Friday.

What great timing!