Amazon strike days install#
Amazon strike days drivers#
Amazon strike days driver#
Amazon strike days series#

Amazon strike days drivers#

That morning, the 84 drivers awoke to no assigned routes from Amazon or Battle Tested Strategies. Instead, the company immediately announced that the subcontractor “had a track record of failing to perform and had been notified of its termination for poor performance well before today’s announcement.” It also said their contract would expire on June 24. They asked that Amazon respect the terms of the new contract, which guarantees $30 hourly wages, health and vehicle safety standards, and the right to refuse unsafe deliveries. On April 24, the drivers announced that they had formed a union and had bargained a contract with Battle Tested Strategies to address fair pay and worker safety in the heat. The 84 drivers in Palmdale work for Battle Tested Strategies, one of these businesses, which operates out of an Amazon warehouse. On paper, the drivers are employed by a network of small businesses that each rent 20–40 vans and employ up to 100 people. Here's Howĭespite the fact that workers who deliver Amazon packages sport branded vests, shirts, and pants drive Amazon-branded trucks have schedules and wage floors set by Amazon receive routes from an Amazon app and can be disciplined and fired by Amazon, the company claims they aren’t technically employees. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. But Amazon’s 275,000 drivers are hired through 3,000 third-party subcontractors, with whom Amazon can cancel contracts with little explanation or warning, making it particularly difficult for workers to unionize or fight to improve conditions.

Amazon strike days install#

UPS, whose iconic brown-uniformed drivers are directly employed by the company, recently agreed to install air conditioners in their trucks after drivers across the country picketed work sites and threatened to strike.

Amazon strike days driver#

UPS has reported at least 143 heat-related injuries on the job in recent years, and a United States Postal Service driver recently died of heat exposure. Heat exposure affects delivery drivers across companies. Last August, after the drivers prepared a list of demands around pay, safety, and extreme temperatures, Amazon responded by offering workers two 16-ounce bottles of water a day.

“You don’t stop until you’re done or you get reprimanded.” “On the days that you work, it’s basically mandatory overtime,” he added. Some people even have to miss their guaranteed 15-minute breaks, because if we break the pace, they contact us to try and find out why we’re behind.” You instantly start feeling woozy, and it’s gotten to the point where I’ve actually seen stars.”Įven on scorching days, said Singh, “Amazon sets these ridiculous paces. “It feels like an oven when you step back there. “Sometimes it reaches 135 degrees in the rear of the truck and there’s no cooling system,” said Singh, who has worked the job for two and half years and through the height of the pandemic. Raj Singh, a driver, knows that only too well. And since June 24, these workers have been on an indefinite strike.Īmazon’s requirement of drivers to make up to 400 stops per day, even when temperatures exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, can make operating one of those ubiquitous gray and blue vans a particularly hazardous occupation. In Southern California, 84 delivery drivers joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and negotiated the first union contract among any Amazon workers in the country. Extreme heat and unsafe working conditions under the merchant giant have now spurred drivers to unionize. Heat waves can delay flights and melt airplane tarmac, but Amazon won’t let them hinder Prime deliveries.

Amazon strike days series#

This story is part of Record High, a Grist series examining extreme heat and its impact on how - and where - we live.