From Vice:
Hundreds of Amazon Workers Are Not Going to Work in Nationwide Protest
Amazon warehouse workers are staging their biggest mass action since the pandemic began.
More than 300 Amazon warehouse workers at 50 facilities across the country have pledged to call out of work in the coming days to protest Amazon’s handling of the coronavirus—the largest mass action against the company since the start of the pandemic.
In recent days, Amazon has confirmed at least 75 coronavirus cases in more than half of its 110 warehouse facilities, and experts have warned that the number of positive cases is “likely to exponentially increase” in the coming days and months due to Amazon’s failure to implement an effective national safety plan for its warehouses.
“I will be calling out sick tomorrow to protest because Amazon is not allowing us to stay home and practice real social distancing,” Monica Moody, a 22-year-old packer at an Amazon Fulfillment center in Concord, North Carolina and a member of United For Respect, told Motherboard. “I have to go to work and risk being exposed to this virus. I need the money."
These actions are exactly what NYC teachers needed to take last month when the NYC Department of Education sent us to work in what they and the UFT knew were buildings where someone had COVID-19. The UFT, if it were a union, would have advised its members forcefully to stay out of infected buildings as this blog did.
I am not sure how many UFT member COVID-19 cases were caused because our union and other school worker unions were afraid that if they told members to stay out of infected buildings, they would lose their automatic dues check-off. We do know from Selim Algar in the NY Post that the DOE death toll from COVID-19 has risen to 61. For 75 COVID-19 cases, not deaths, the Amazon workers are walking out. We should learn from them.
22 comments:
Good for them.
The Chief-Civil Service Leader is a good source to find out how the unions are stepping up. I get a subscription-it's invaluable. The Guardian reports on worker actions worldwide.
The city unions aren't stepping up. Threatening to withhold our labor is the only real weapon we have. Nobody will use it. Not us, not TWU, not the nurses who don't have PPE, nobody. (OK, the nurses would be hard now but what about everyone else?) We don't threaten job actions so we get sick in bigger numbers. You die for your job. You think the city gives a shit?
There's a call in Thursday for a town hall meeting. Call in and let Mulgrew know how he's doing as UFT president. He's spectacular, right?
He will protect his money. He will send all of us to get sick and won't lose a minute sleep.
Mulgrew is Di Dlasio's bitch.
That is what he is doing. How he is doing it is just too much porn.
Well in the Chief-"COBA, City Agree on Respirators and Virus Testing for Officers", there are also articles featuring the PBA, H+H, EMS, TWU, NYCHA, OCME. As well as PEF the state union. If anyone feels that Covid-19 was contracted on the job, see their website on how to document this.
We are all workers and we all need to support each other.
https://www.pef.org/media-center/covid-19/
Call in with accurate data: poor attendance. assignments not completed.
When is the UFT going to send out information on the next Town Hall virtual meeting? Have not received a notification as yet.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s critics let him know how they really felt about him ordering New Yorkers to snitch on each other for violating social-distancing rules — by flooding his new tip line with crank complaints including “dick pics” and people flipping the bird, The Post has learned.
Photos of extended middle fingers, the mayor dropping the Staten Island groundhog and news coverage of him going to the gym have all been texted to a special tip line that de Blasio announced Saturday, according to screenshots posted on Twitter.
One user sent the message “We will fight this tyrannical overreach!” to the service and got an automated message that in part said, “Hello, and thank you for texting NYC311.”
“F–k you!” replied @MorganLSchmidt1, along with a meme showing Adolf Hitler and the words “TO THOSE TURNING IN YOUR NEIGHBORS AND LOCAL BUSINESSES — YOU DID THE REICH THING.”
“Start flooding their reporting text numbers with this pics!” the tweet added.
Other profane messages included a photo of a bowl of gummy candies in the shape of male genitalia and a sign saying “EAT A BAG OF D–KS.”
It was not immediately clear whether any of the posters actually lived in New York City.
An NYPD source said that “dick pic” photos of real penises have also been texted to 311, and a caller phoned in a tip that de Blasio was seen performing oral sex on someone “in an alleyway behind a 7-11” early Sunday.
“He looked at me…and coofed in my direction,” the caller said, according to a photo of the 311 operator’s computer screen provided to The Post.
“Coof” is a newly coined term for coughing while infected with the coronavirus, according to the Urban Dictionary website.
The inundation of off-color texts was so large the city had to temporarily shut down the service.
“The city has begun vetting everything before dispersing the information to precincts,” the NYPD source said
@4:34: Damn. That's very mature. By the way, if im in a store and you are behind me not wearing a mask i WILL report it. Snitch mitch. Idk
5:20 wave that virtue flag! You're a warrior! Fighting for all of us and justice! Let's get those armbands going next. Scratch a liberal and you'll find a fascist right underneath. Some are more repulsive than others.
@6:17 pm...sticks and stones. Make sure you have that mask on and 6 feet distance or else baby....snap snap and 311.
"waiting for support" seems like the typical character on the left who is reliant on the government or some other entity to help him survive, he is unable to make it on his own. After all, why would he call himself "waiting for support"?
Hey waiting for support- Why don't you emigrate to North Korea or Iran where you can snitch on your fellow citizen all year long not just during a pandemic?
And do you behave this way in your school?
7:58 sounds like a typical right wing fool who enjoys being ripped off by the Jeff Bezos, Walton family types in this world. Why don't you emigrate to Somalia where there is pure capitalism and no safety net?
To be fair, these 300 people work out to 6 per warehouse. Amazon won't even notice. They make up barely 1% of the workforce. The day after the NBA cancelled its season we (my school) had a higher % of teachers who called out on their own. The rest of us who showed up were happy to get the 2 coverages on Thursday and Friday.
Knowing what we knew 5 weeks ago, not now, how many people honestly would have listened if the UFT said don't go in? I wouldn't have. I thought the people staying home were wasting their CAR days.
I disagree TJL. March 11 the WHO declared a pandemic. There was community spread of COVID-19 already in NYC. Had the UFT led the way in schools they knew were infected, lives could have been saved. Teachers and parents would have listened. Instead, the UFT worried about losing dues. The membership was ahead of the union as the teachers calling in sick en masse that next weekend helped to force the mayor's hand to finally close school buildings. Amazon's workers are doing this without a union. I salute them. If our union did something, nobody would have had to work in person from March 17-19. Yes, lives would have been saved.
If our teachers organized, we could have shown how really powerful the UFT is. Instead, we showed how weak we are. That is a real danger now.
@7:58 am: Get to work. Wear your mask. All of that other noise rambling out your mouth is just that to me: Noise.
James it depends on how you look at it. Leadership manages to get large majorities of people *who vote* to approve its terrible contracts. How much of that is due to its bully pulpit? Would the same bully pulpit have convinced a majority of teachers to stay home?
So let's say the Unity machine used its CL's, NY Teacher, Twitter, etc. to tell people to stay home. What percent of teachers would listen? I figure all or most of the teachers who don't vote wouldn't listen or pay attention. They're disconnected. Teachers like myself and some like-minded colleagues at my school who are against Mulgrew certainly wouldn't listen to him or the Unity shills on Twitter.
I was at a fantasy baseball draft that Saturday and at Mass on Sunday. Why wouldn't I be at work on Monday?
Now maybe more germane to this blog is that in places like Chicago and LA the teachers stayed home too as well as students once they closed. My impression, granted I haven't looked into it in detail, is that those unions are more militant than ours. Is that due to the leadership of those Unions, how they're run (is there one party control?) or the members themselves? I don't know the answer to that question.
If the UFT said buildings are dangerous, we recommend you don't enter them, the buildings would be empty. They could add that anyone who enters, enters at their own risk. Mulgrew would have been a folk hero if he said that on March 12 in the schools that they knew were infected and DOE was not following DOH protocol. There would be calls for him to run for mayor as a decisive leader. Instead, he worried about his precious dues.
They are much more militant in Chicago and LA. There is real accountability for the teacher unions in those cities.
Mulgrew could have easily disagreed with the mayors ridiculous life costing decision and member of the UFT would have respected common sense leadership for the safety of all. Instead he allowed families to die, grandparents and many more.
We need one of those ridiculous #me too movement, jesus we have enough liberals here.
Nice if asshole Bill Gates can donate 500 million to the DOE. Unfortunately, this world is backward where we pay athletes millllionsssss and nurses, firefighters, teachers get crap.
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