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Dozens of Amazon workers at the company’s airport in San Bernardino, Calif., walked off their jobs mid-shift on Monday over low wages and heat safety concerns.
The strike in Southern California marks the first coordinated labor action at Amazon’s growing air freight division, which uses Prime-branded planes to fly packages and goods across the country, much like UPS or FedEx. The independently organized workers said they had no plans to return to work on Monday to pressure Amazon to raise wages and improve safety.
Organizers said more than 150 people left Monday afternoon and managers had already slowed down some operations in anticipation of the action. While a small proportion of the 1,500 employees who work various shifts at the hub will leave the facility, such a work stoppage can cause logistical problems and disruptions.
Amazon spokesman Paul Flaningan disputed that figure, saying the number of company employees taking part was around 74.
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Monday’s strike is the latest sign of pro-union sentiment spreading through Amazon’s ranks – this time at a particularly vulnerable point in its logistics network. Amazon relies heavily on a few air hubs to move millions of packages a day, meaning the impact of a strike or work stoppage at one of those facilities would have a greater impact than a similar action at a regional warehouse.
Even as Amazon, the nation’s second-largest private employer, is using its weight against organized labor — for example, trying to overturn the results of the Amazon Labor Union’s historic Staten Island election victory — the California strike shows how workers are faring continue to organize independently across the country.
Anna Ortega, 23, said she hopes the San Bernardino strike she participated in will force Amazon to “stop and think about what they’re doing and why.”
“With the rising cost of everything in our lives, it’s becoming difficult to make ends meet,” said Ortega, who makes $17.30 an hour. “It doesn’t make sense that people who work here are living on food stamps or struggling financially.”
Workers are also demanding better heat protection measures as the temperature has often reached over 100 degrees this summer, causing heat-related illnesses, particularly among workers loading and unloading aircraft outdoors. Federal health and safety officials recently investigated the deaths of three Amazon workers in New Jersey and expanded an investigation into safety issues at Amazon warehouses nationally.
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“We value and respect the direct relationship we have with our employees to discuss and address feedback,” Amazon’s Flaningan said before the walkout. “Through this open-door policy, we have many communication channels that we use, including all-hands meetings that help us address employee concerns.”
Flaningan added that full-time employees at the San Bernardino hub and throughout the region earn a minimum wage of $17 an hour and can earn up to $19.25 and receive health care, retirement benefits and up to 20 weeks of parental leave. When asked about Monday afternoon’s strike, Flaningan said the company respects workers’ right to leave the workplace.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.
The San Bernardino walkout is part of a broader wave of nationwide campaigns to organize workers at Amazon warehouses — so far marked by a Staten Island election victory for the unions. The results at a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, are too close to retrieve and are being contested. A warehouse in Albany, NY is also close to submitting for a vote.
The coordinated work stoppage in San Bernardino is the culmination of months of organizing by an independent workers group called the Inland Empire Amazon Workers United, formed earlier this year. workers they said have met in break rooms, workers’ housing, restaurants and a community center in San Bernardino over the past few months to discuss working conditions.
The seed for the group was planted during a facility-wide meeting earlier this year, when a handful of air hub workers came forward and circulated a petition about the hardships caused by hundreds of dollars in lost wages for individual workers during unexpected recent holiday closures were caused in 2021.
In response, Amazon’s Flaningan said the company had changed its global policy on temporary closures, limiting any impact to one unpaid shift per holiday period.
In July, after months of organizing inside and outside the camp, the group submitted a petition to the camp administration with more than 800 signatures from workers at the facility. They called for a $5 an hour wage increase and a series of smaller pay increases for workers with certain job titles and night shifts.
“We at Amazon Associates are working hard to ensure the building meets target numbers and working together to keep all of our customers happy,” the petition reads. “[But] we can hardly afford to live in today’s economy.”
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According to the workers’ petition, the average rent in San Bernardino is $1,650 per month, meaning full-time Amazon Airport employees, who earn a starting wage of $17 an hour, earn about 75 percent of their monthly after-tax earnings for have to pay the rent. The legal minimum wage in California is $15 an hour; According to MIT researchers, a living wage in the San Bernardino area for someone with no children would be closer to $18.10.
“We’re not producing enough to salvage anything,” said Sara Fee, a lead organizer at Inland Empire Amazon Workers United, who sorts packages at the air hub. “If something goes wrong with my car, I have no savings. I can’t afford to eat healthy. I need to buy chicken nuggets or pasta.”
Amazon called all stakeholders at the facility on August 3-5 to address the petition. Managers suggested that workers save money by using public transportation and signing up for a carpooling benefits program. They also offered a $1.50 per hour increase for weekday night shifts and a $2 per hour increase for weekend night shifts.
Four workers involved in organizing at the facility described their grueling working conditions to The Washington Post. Two workers said they had heat-related nosebleeds that summer and another described hitting her head on a shipping container and suffering a concussion.
“It’s been really hot every day this summer,” said Daniel Rivera, one of the leaders of the work stoppage unloading cargo from planes. “They say there is air conditioning, but you only feel it in some areas.”
Amazon’s Flaningan said the entire Air Hub campus has indoor air conditioning and no heat-related illnesses have been reported from active charging areas so far.
Marc Wulfraat, an industry consultant who follows Amazon’s facilities worldwide, said the San Bernardino air hub is one of the most logistically significant in the country for Amazon. The facility is a regional hub that routes customer orders from across the country to West Coast outposts. Recent data shows the facility monitors about seven flights a day to and from the East Coast, Midwest, Texas and Pacific Northwest.
San Bernardino and neighboring Riverside County have more than 35 Amazonian facilities. The company is the largest private employer in the region.
Air hubs are more important to Amazon for entire regions than a warehouse, which the company could redirect in the event of disruptions, Wulfraat said.
San Bernardino air hub workers have received organizational help and meeting space from local labor organizations, including the Warehouse Worker Resource Center and Teamsters Local 1932, but prefer to remain independent.
Workers who left Amazon’s plant on Monday have no immediate plans to petition the National Labor Relations Board for a union election, but they said they would consider petitioning for a formal election in the future.
“Staten Island was absolutely inspiring,” said Fee. “Union organization is not off the table for us.”