Editor’s note: On the day of this protest, our photographer Sean Fitzpatrick was able to take some photographs, which can be seen in the photo slideshow below: 

The Teamsters partnership has already benefited the workers, as on July 17th (about a week after this protest), raw sewage started leaking into the lower floors of the building.  The Teamsters intervened when workers were told to stay at their stations (next to the sewage), and everyone was evacuated safely.  

Heated Staten Island Amazon Warehouse Workers Rally for Better Conditions

The Prime Day protest focused on complaints about soaring temperatures and lax safety protocols in the facility as the company has refused to negotiate with the three-year-old union.

Jul 10 6:21pm EDT

The Amazon Labor Union held a rally outside the JFK8 Fulfilmment Center in Staten Island Wednesday evening  — in the midst of the retail giant’s  “Prime Day” promotion — to protest what they say are unsafe working conditions that have persisted for years.

Workers from other Amazon sites in the Hudson Valley, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and even a Whole Foods in Philadelphia — the first location of that Amazon-owned grocer to unionize — came to show support for the rally at the warehouse near the Goethals Bridge.

The temperature inside the sprawling, 855,000 square foot facility is untenable according to Amazon employees at the rally, who are calling on the corporation to provide adequate air conditioning.

“A couple weeks ago I ended up getting a heat stroke in the building,” said Adrian Easterling, an inventory picker at the warehouse, who said the boiling heat and lack of proper airflow led to his medical episode. “Amazon is a multi-trillion dollar company. They should be providing us with water and proper AC and air that’s not filled with dust. It’s disheartening.”

Easterling said his missed shift was covered by Amazon but that he had to pay for the medical bills incurred from his hospital visit.

One picker at JFK8, Yackisha Nebot Lopez, pulled out a “Qwik Stik” electrolyte powder pack  that Amazon gives out to help workers get through scorching hot days inside the warehouse. She and her colleagues at the rally stated they’d prefer adequate air conditioning in the buildings instead.

“They treat us like garbage. We work in the sweltering heat every summer,” said James Cario, an ALU shop steward at JFK8. “It’s been six years [since the facility opened]. Where’s the HVAC? Where’s the air conditioning?”

He added: “Amazon sets the tone here. We’re letting Amazon know we’re not afraid to escalate. If they don’t want to change how business is done, then business as usual cannot continue.”

Others also criticized the presence of dirty working stations filled with dust and other materials, along with rough, uncovered metal that has nicked and scratched warehouse workers.

In the three years that the ALU has been certified by the National Labor Relations Board, Amazon has not sat down at the bargaining table once, workers noted.

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The company has instead ignored the union and filed appeal after appeal to try to break up the new union. Last year, members of the ALU voted to merge with the Teamsters.

“While we certainly respect the rights of all individuals to protest for causes they believe in, it’s important to point out that yesterday’s gathering was largely initiated and attended by outside organizers and former Amazon employees,” Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards wrote the CITY in an email Thursday. “For more than two years now, the ALU and the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public by claiming they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push that false narrative.”

As of now, JFK8 is made up of more than 5,000 unionized workers alongside 200 non-unionized workers as well as drivers who are all subcontractors that do not work out of the Staten Island fulfillment center specifically according to ALU Recording Secretary Sultana Hossain.

The rally comes on the heels of a march on management that the ALU conducted last month over unsafe working conditions at JFK8. That followed the death of a worker, 34-year-old Leony Salcedo-Chevalier, in April. An investigation by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is still ongoing, according to the union.

But ALU members said they were not informed by Amazon about the workplace death. They also have not received any information about what workplace protocols were, or were not, followed, prior to Chevalier’s death, Hossain told THE CITY.

Despite a reported steep dropoffs in sales for retailers on the first day of Prime Day compared to last year, numbers are expected to increase by 9.1% year-over-year at the conclusion of what’s now a four-day sales push, according to Bloomberg.

Workers called on Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos to share more of that pie.

“He spent about 50 million on a wedding,” said Anthony Rosario, a Teamster lead organizer for the Amazon division, in reference to Bezos’ recent extravagant nuptials. “All the workers want is a livable wage.”

A drone could be seen flying in the air at the beginning of the 5 p.m. rally — which workers noted was also present during the holiday season strike last December. They said they did not know who it belonged to.

In case you missed the previous Amazon Labor Union news about their joining the Teamsters Union, see below.  This has already benefited the Amazon workers, as the Teamsters were able to pressure Amazon to close the warehouse at JFK8 and send the workers home with pay when the lower floor of the warehouse filled up with raw sewage. 

Staten Island’s Amazon Labor Union Joins Forces with the Teamsters

The merger, which is pending ratification by workers at an Amazon shipping warehouse, gives the fledgling union a major boost to secure a first contract with the megaretailer.

Jun 10 5:02pm EDT

The labor union that defied the odds to organize workers at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse is moving to affiliate with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, union leadership and the Teamsters announced last week.

The Amazon Labor Union’s steps to get the backing of the 1.3 million-member union comes more than two years after it won a recognition vote from staff at the JFK8 fulfillment center, which remains the only unionized Amazon facility in the United States.

The move to affiliate with the Teamsters, which is pending ratification by members, gives the warehouse workers stronger legal and financial resources to force the megaretailer to the bargaining table and secure a first contract. And it could stand to revitalize the struggling labor group, which has been plagued by financial issues and infighting.

“Today is an historical day for labor in America as we now combine forces with one of the most powerful unions to take on Amazon together,” ALU president and co-founder Chris Smalls wrote on X. “Our message is clear we want a Contract and we want it Now.” Smalls did not respond to a message and a phone call from THE CITY seeking comment.

Reached for comment on Thursday, an Amazon spokesperson told THE CITY the company had nothing to say about the affiliation news.

Union and reform leadership had been in talks with the Teamsters for several weeks on an agreement that would charter the union as an autonomous Teamsters local, including at a mid-May summit in Washington, D.C. The rank and file will vote to approve the merger in the coming weeks.

Sultana Hossain,  a member of the ALU’s reform caucus, said she would vote to affiliate with the Teamsters, citing their resources, funding and influence on the national stage. Hossain, 26, was fired from JFK8 last year, she claims in retaliation for her organizing.

“Amazon needs to get ready. We’re ready, we know what we have to do, and now we’ll have the resources to do it,” said Hossain. “It will just make it that much easier for workers to understand that we need to be a part of this, like every single one of us, we have to have each other’s back, and we together need to take on Amazon. No one is going to do it for us.”

The formerly independent union will now be known as ALU-International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 1, and will represent the roughly 8,000 warehouse workers at JFK8. It has jurisdiction over the five boroughs.

News of the ALU’s merger with the Teamsters sends a warning shot to Amazon and proves that the union is stronger than the retailer may have assumed, said Rebecca Givan, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University.

“I think Amazon, as an employer, was trying to beat the Amazon Labor Union in a war of attrition, and this is essentially a massive boost to the workers, and suggests that Amazon can’t just wait them out and kind of run off the clock on bargaining,” she said.

The alliance is also a boost to the Teamsters’ ambitions to organize Amazon delivery drivers nationally. Through that campaign they have so far organized roughly 80 drivers employed by an Amazon subcontractor in Palmdale, Calif.

“In this partnership, the Teamsters and ALU will ensure Amazon workers at JFK8 realize the first contract they are long overdue,” Teamsters international president Sean O’Brien said in a statement last week. “We will continue to expand our organizing campaigns nationwide. We will exhaust all resources to hold Amazon accountable.”

Smalls told the Washington Post that the decision to affiliate with the Teamsters “made sense as opposed to working on separate campaigns” to organize Amazon workers.

ALU has struggled to organize more facilities since its historic victory at JFK8 in April 2022. A month later, it lost a union vote at a neighboring warehouse known as LDJ5, and lost another election in Albany that same year.

Amazon, which has spent millions of dollars on union-busting consultants since 2021, has lost multiple appeals it has submitted to federal regulators seeking to overturn the 2022 JFK8 union election results. The Seattle-based retail giant is one of several companies — including SpaceX and Trader Joe’s – arguing in legal filings that the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections and certain labor disputes, is unconstitutional.

Amazon Labor Union is also in the midst of its first-ever internal leadership election campaign, after an internal reform caucus filed a federal lawsuit against union leadership last year to force a vote.

A date for the internal leadership election vote is expected to be scheduled by a court-appointed monitor sometime next month, the ALU Democratic Reform Caucus said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Both of these milestones, elections and affiliation, mark a fresh start for our union,” the statement read.

Banner Image: Amazon warehouse protest. Image Credit – Sean Fitzpatrick