#amazon strikes

Respectfully asking if I can get a bunch of notes on this so I can show my phone when I go to the rally and let them see how much support they have! ✊

And here are the Amazon strike fund details to donate if you're able:

Name - GMB Midland & East Coast

Bank - Unity Trust

Sort Code - 60-83-01

A/c No - 33010410

Ref - Amazon

I'm pretty sure I know how this works:

Like to charge, reblog to cast!

Update:

Thanks everyone who has responded to show your support, here's a link to an interview with one of the GMB union officials earlier this morning after Amazon workers walked out at 00:00.

I will update again later today when I visit the picket, but as this is doing numbers here's a link to the official donation page: stick it to Amazon and show your support for the workers! Solidarity ✊

Update 2:

Some great fighting talk from union speakers willing to take on Amazon.

Strikers told me that amazon managers and bosses have been intimidating staff & taking advantage of the fact that many workers are on zero hour contracts & many are immigrants and they speak a lot of different languages, so they've been lining the hallways to watch them as they leave shifts and lying about the union by saying the union is threatening people and beating them up, all to pressure them to stay silent and be too afraid to communicate so they don't go on strike with their colleagues. But they wont win - the strike was national news, from Philip Schofield talking about Jeff Bezos only offering a 50p raise from his billions on This Morning to major news coverage throughout the day. At one point we were live on Channel 4!

I told workers and union officials that over a thousand people from tumblr who are mostly queer/trans/nonbinary/otherwise lgbtq+ wanted them to know that they support the Amazon strikers.

One striker seemed surprised by this and I got to talk to him about how lgbtq+ people are working class too, how lgbtq+ rights are working class rights, how none of us are free from exploitation until we all are, so no wonder the gay website supports you, and he seemed to really take that on board.

All the workers were grateful for everyone who showed up and thank you all for your support - this is just the start.

We worked through the entire Covid pandemic, including the lockdowns. We’ve been waiting for information about this pay rise since April with everyone expecting at least £2 extra per hour. However, management announced on Wednesday that we were only going to get a 50p rise per hour.

We only planned to go on strike two hours before it actually happened. We had seen the strikes at Tilbury and Rugeley fulfilment centres on TikTok during our break time, and it inspired us to strike. We watched those videos at 11am, and started spreading the idea of a walkout through word of mouth around the warehouse. By 1pm, we had over 300 people who walked out and stopped working. At the beginning, we had no help with the strikes from any trade unions. We organised it all ourselves. However, after we walked out, GMB made some contact with us about joining the union and giving us advice.

When we walked out again on Thursday, the GM (General Manager) came into the canteen area, where those of us refusing to work had congregated. The GM told us we had 30 minutes to come up with our reasoning for refusing to work and send someone over to discuss the strike with them. We refused to send only one person, as we all agreed that we wanted to go as one team.

We told the GM that we demand a better pay rise, asked them questions about our pay, and how they had come up with this 50p per hour rise. We were then told later that they would “take it away and try to get an answer.” After this, the managers said we wouldn’t get paid unless we returned to work. But everyone stayed, still refusing to go back to work.

On Friday morning, again about 100 associates walked out and protested outside.

“We were experiencing a lot of issues, from sore throats, irritation, allergy like symptoms, and I have a 9 month old baby now with a rash all over his body and feeling miserable. We had no idea what it was until now. There are fiberglass like things all over from this mattress. We’ve had this mattress a little over a year. Now I have to deal with cleaning and disposing of a lot of things that are beyond salvageable.”

“My husband and myself both started having horrid allergy issues and my husband ended up even having sinus surgery. Turns out our issues are from breathing in these tiny fibers! Very upsetting. PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT BUY!!!! It took us a year to finally figure out what was causing. I know have damage to my lungs from breathing in fiber glass . There should definitly be a law suit banning these as hazardous.”

“Furious. If I could give no stars I would. Took the mattress cover off to wash it and there's fiberglass everywhere!!! Beware! Do not buy. My kids and I are covered in it!!”

It destroyed my new washing machine and i also noticed some of it embedded in my skin.There is no real way to clean the thousands, if not millions of fibers from your belongings. I called someone to come haul it away a week ago and have been attempting to clean up the millions of fibers of glass ever since.

Wow. Every single Prime Day deal mattress comes with a hazard that can cause permanent damage to your lungs and/or skin. Wow. That’s so crazy. What a rush they must be in, huh? Wow, isn’t that wild?

Wow! multiple models, multiple brands, including AmazonBasics; so much variety and yet they all have this one totally dangerous and cool and totally legal hazard in them: lots and lots of fiberglass!!! not to mention the many others that arrive with mold in them, or mold and fiberglass!! Wow! Ain’t that neat? But what’s crazier is they’re all the hardest pushed and discounted results on Amazon’s site - isn’t that wild? :^) during Amazon’s whatever the fuck sale that coincides with the workers organizing together against Amazon? Wow.

The one that Amazon has yet again done everything they can to undercut and overtake in any way possible? such as zealously pushing defective and hazardous products just so they can have a short term sales peak that might publicly obscure any organized effort against them? :^) Huh? Ain’t that just wild?

Did you know we typically spend a full third of our life sleeping? With a bed? That’s a lot of time! That’s even more time if you spend waking hours within any short distance within your bed too! Did you know that these beds expel fiberglass and mold! Wow, isn’t that wild?

:^)

Wow. Every single Prime Day deal mattress comes with a hazard that can cause permanent damage to your lungs and/or skin. Wow. That’s so crazy. What a rush they must be in, huh? Wow, isn’t that wild?

don’t let the consumer pov here detract from the more important perspective: