STOP Scab Amazon In San Francisco! End Slave Labor & Union Busting By Bezos

SF Rally: STOP Scab Amazon In San Francisco!
End Slave Labor & Union Busting By Bezos

On Jeff Bezos Birthday-Give Him The Birthday He Deserves!
Bring Your Posters and Puppets-Leave Bezos In Space

Wednesday January 12, 2021 Noon
Proposed Massive Amazon Warehouse
900 7th St.& Berry St.
San Francisco

Amazon has bought a whole square block in San Francisco for $200 million and wants to build a massive warehouse and use non-union labor threatening Teamsters at UPS and large number of small retailers who will be wiped out.

They have also fired thousands of workers from throughout the US for trying to organize and also workers who complain about serious health and safety dangers.

The same wrecking operation by Bezos also took place with Wal-Mart at rural communities throughout the United States when Wal-Mart moved in.

The land was supposed to be zoned for working class low income housing but the corrupt City officials controlled by developers allowed Amazon to use it for their proposed new warehouse.

It will also lead to massive closures of small businesses and increases the traffic and pollution with hundreds of trucks coming out of the warehouse. The poverty wages off Amazon workers means that they would have to commute hundreds of miles into San Francisco or be forced to sleep in their cars as UBER and Lyft drivers do.

Speakers will talk about the fight for labor and human rights at Amazon in Italy, Poland, South Africa
and in the US.

Initiated by
United Front Committee For A Labor Party
https://www.facebook.com/masslaborpartyusa/

This part of a US and internatioal day of action sponsored by
https://supportamazonworkers.org

AMAZON WORKER KILLED IN DEADLY TORNADO WASN’T ALLOWED TO LEAVE THE WAREHOUSE Horrifying details are emerging about the tornado that killed 6 workers at an Amazon warehouse.
https://perfectunion.us/amazon-worker-killed-in-deadly-tornado-wasnt-allowed-to-leave/
December 14 2021
Horrifying details are emerging about the tornado disaster at Amazon’s warehouse in Illinois, where at least 6 workers were killed on the job.
Before he died, Larry Virden reportedly texted his girlfriend: “Amazon won’t let us leave.” He leaves behind four children.
29-year old Clayton Cope rushed to save the lives of his co-workers and warn them about the tornado. He was killed when the warehouse collapsed. “At least I did get to say I love you,” his mother told the local news.
The disaster calls into question some of Amazon’s key business practices. Only 7 of 190 people working at the facility were full-time staff. Amazon’s dependence on contractors allows them to avoid liability for accidents and undercut union organizing.
Amazon workers are also decrying the company’s ban on people carrying their phones on the job, leaving them unable to get updates or contact people during emergencies.
“After these deaths, there is no way in hell I am relying on Amazon to keep me safe.”
Amazon workers are demanding change and accountability. This is Darryl Richardson, one of the leading organizers of the effort to unionize Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama: “We can’t keep letting Amazon get Away with the way they are treating employees, something got to change.”
Amazon executives sent “thoughts and prayers” to its warehouse workers while forcing them to work through a deadly tornado. Why didn’t they send Amazon workers home and out of harm’s way?
Amazon has repeatedly forced its workers to keep working through life-threatening natural disasters. “This is another outrageous example of the company putting profits over the health and safety of their workers,” said Stuart Appelbaum of @RWDSU.
45 people were rescued from the Amazon facility in addition to the 6 who lost their lives. OSHA has now opened an investigation into the fatal warehouse collapse.


Proposed Amazon Mission Creek Distribution Center, 900 Seventh Street, San Francisco

Amazon paid $200 million in December 2020 for an entire block site to build a distribution center in San Francisco’s Mission Creek neighborhood. Amazon has resisted labor equity by blocking union rights each time their employees have sought labor organization. The San Francisco planning permit process is underway for this Mission Creek site at 900 Seventh Street and we must insure that Amazon respects workers’ right to union representation in San Francisco. The San Francisco Planning Department permit process should require commitment to these rights.

The mission Creek site was to have been residential housing of some 400-500 units, many at below market rate. This housing has been sacrificed for Amazon. Across Seventh Street are publicly financed parcels of the Mission Bay Urban Renewal Area that will be impacted by the project. Forty-one years ago Marriott Hotels agreed to labor rights at the urban renewal project at Fourth and Mission, but then stonewalled union representation for 16 years, until the US 9th Circuit Court compelled them. We cannot let Amazon repeat this same treatment which Marriott inflicted on San Francisco.

Amazon’s massive distribution center will have a lasting effect on the city reaching well beyond the Mission Creek area. Our neighborhood businesses will be deeply impacted. Amazon must mitigate some of these immense social dislocations. The requirement to guarantee worker rights is modest compared to the community costs.

The history of toxic abuse on the site has not been raised by the Planning Department or publicly acknowledged. For decades an asphalt plant operated at the De Haro Street, western end of the site. The asphalt plant was part of the Consumers Rock and Cement Company facility from 1938 to 1961. Previously it had been a component of Ready-mix Concrete Company, which owned the site from 1929 to 1938.

The Mohawk Petroleum Company, Mopeco, had a gasoline depot, at the center of the site, for its chain of service stations in San Francisco and those outside the city from 1935 to 1950. Previous to Mohawk, Western Oil & Refining Company operated the gasoline depot starting in 1929. There has been no notation of these possible toxin sources in the planning process.

Additionally, the land-fill itself may pose issues as the southern third of the entire block site constitutes the 1900 location of the open waterway of Mission Creek that has been filled in. Previously Mission Creek continued from its current terminus, running under a Seventh Street bridge and across the site to Carolina Street past Eighth Street off the site to the west. At the center of the site a branch of Mission Creek forked northward and continued out Division Street. This branch of Mission Creek was bridged by Berry Street. The deep settling of Seventh Street today at Channel Street, betrays the former location of Mission Creek and subsidence dangers. Tests for earthquake subsidence potential may be required.


Additional links:
Amazon warehouse workers suffer serious injuries at higher rates than other firms. Critics blame productivity
A Washington Post analysis of Occupational Safety and Health Administration data shows Amazon’s serious injury rates are nearly double those at warehouses run by other companies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../amazon-osha-injury.../...
Fired, interrogated, disciplined: Amazon warehouse organizers allege year of retaliation The number of charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board accusing Amazon of interfering with workers’ right to organize more than tripled during the pandemic.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1262367...
Torture On The Job

Amazon Is Forcing Its Warehouse Workers Into Brutal ‘Megacycle’ Shifts
The company has been quietly transitioning warehouse workers at Amazon warehouses nationwide to a 10-hour graveyard shift, known as the “megacycle.”
https://www.vice.com/.../amazon-is-forcing-its-warehouse…

Ex-Amazon workers talk of 'horrendous' conditions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYUJjpIxkCU

Protest at Amazon's New SF Warehouse Site
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2021/03/20/18840936.php

Amazon Worker Testifies at Hearing
https://www.c-span.org/video/?509934-1/senate-budget-hearing-income-inequality-unionize

Italian Mass Picket At Amazon Warehouse by Si Cobas-Manifestazione Si Cobas ad Amazon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlXDdCeF7LE

Dismissal Of Polish Amazon Organizer
https://en.labournet.tv/dismissal-amazon-worker-poznan

Amazon’s Investments in Israel Reveal Complicity in Settlements and Military Operations
Before you click buy on Prime Day, consider Amazon’s role in terrorizing Palestinians.
https://www.thenation.com/.../amazon-prime-day-israel/