Several Amazon workers at two of its facilities in the US staged a pre-Christmas walkout, which is the busiest time of the year, asking for better treatment and higher wages.
Before walking out on Wednesday morning (US time), the workers handed over a petition listing their demands to the management, but didn’t receive a response, reports TechCrunch.
“We have been passed over for raises. We are being overworked, even when there are sufficient people to work here,” a worker at the DLN2 facility in Cicero, Chicago area, said on a livestream.
“We have not received the bonuses we were promised. There are people here who were hired as permanent workers, and then they took their badges away and made them temporary workers. They are staffing this place unsafely, making people work too fast, even though we don’t have to,” the Amazon worker lamented.
The workers, who work between 1:20 a.m. and 11:50 a.m., are demanding a $5 per hour raise.
Amazon told TechCrunch that the current starting pay is $15.80 per hour at the two facilities that staged walkouts in Chicago.
“We respect the rights of employees to protest and recognise their legal right to do so. We are proud to offer employees leading pay, competitive benefits, and the opportunity to grow with our company,” an Amazon spokesperson was quoted a saying.
Amazon workers have accused the e-commerce major of “trying to quash labour organising”.
Last year, Amazonians United co-founder Jonathan Bailey filed a complaint with the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), stating that the company violated labour laws by retaliating against him for organising.
The e-commerce giant Amazon is facing a US government’s probe into its warehouse collapse in the state of Illinois that left six people dead.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the US has opened an investigation into the collapse of an Amazon warehouse. The roof had collapsed after a powerful tornado hit the facility on December 10.
