After the death in the JFK8 Warehouse in Staten Island: Amazonas workers have to take control of security at the workplace!

The recent death of Leony Salcedo-Chevalier in the JFK8 camp of Amazon in Staten Island, New York, is the latest avoidable tragedy that blacks the company's notorious record. Salcedo-chevalier was hit and killed by a truck when he worked on the charging cock of the fulfillment center at night. The International Amazon worker voice Requests for an investigation to be carried out by the ranked JFK8 employees into the circumstances of this unnecessary death. We also demand control of employees via security in every Amazon facility.

Leony Salcedo-Chevalier [Photo: Leony Salcedo-Chevalier’s family]

Regardless of the immediate circumstances, it is clear that the people responsible for the premature death of Salcedo-Chevalier, the Amazon management, the founder of the company Jeff Bezos and the potential dictator presidents Donald Trump, which has been reduced by all job regulations as well as the entire financial and corporate oligarchy he served. The death of the employee is not a freak accident, but the predictable result of a systematic, profit-oriented indifference to the life of the workers. Injuries and death in the job have become part of everyday life for American workers, and Amazon is a leader.

Amazon's Dirty Record

The company is responsible for an extraordinary number of injuries. In 2023, the average injury rate for warehouses with more than 1,000 employees, except Amazon, was 3.8 per 100 employees according to an analysis of the National Employment Law. Amazon reported an injury rate of 6.5 per 100 workers for 2023, which is 71 percent higher than that of his colleagues. Amazon's injury rate, which require a job transfer, was 5.1 per 100 employees: almost twice as high as the national average for storage (2.6 per 100 employees).

Some of the recent incidents include:

In May 2023, Caes David Gresbeck died of blunt force trauma on the head when he tried to repair an overhead conveyor. Amazon was borne by $ 7,000 for his death.
In October 2022, a fire began in a trash can at JFK8 that spread smoke and vapors throughout the facility. Edited Stop only after the management was confronted by a lot of angry workers, of which dozens were later released.
Three workers died in the Amazon facilities in New Jersey during a period of three weeks in the summer of 2022.
In December 2021, the Amazon management ignored days of the Tornado warnings and held workers in the DLI4 warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois. The Tornado prompted the building to kill six workers.
Poushawn Brown, a worker in an Amazon facility in North -Virginia, died in sleep in January 2021 in their sleep in inexplicable reasons. Brown, who was 38 years old, and a single mother, had worked as a Covid tester without adequate training or protective equipment. Her family could not afford to perform an autopsy, and Amazon never delivered the family with the help of any kind.
A few days ago, two workers were injured during a fire on the construction site of the Amazon Web Services Data Center near South Bend, Indiana. The severity of her injuries had to be flown to a hospital.

For the control of employees through security!

It is impossible to have safe working conditions as long as Amazon and other jobs are under the thumb of the Wall StreetBoligarch. The employees showed the alternative through their own practice when they forced management to do so after the death of Salcedo-Chevalier for two layers. While the Amazon union approved the interruption of work, the initiative for them came from the workers, not from the union.

This spontaneous initiative must set up an organizational form. The International Amazon worker voice Call from Amazon workers to take measures to assert their right to control the security at the workplace. All of these problems must be in the absolute control of the liberal security committees in every facility that was chosen by trustworthy employees and chosen both managers and union officers. Employees must insist that they also have the right to end the work when it is unsure, even if Covid or other diseases spread out in the facility and completely distribute the employees.

The International Amazon worker voice suggests the following safety-relevant requirements for Amazon workers:

Control of the workers over the speed of the operations!
The control of the workers through surveillance technology with which security must be guaranteed!
Complete medical coverage, completely financed by Amazon for all employees!
Discrimens of the employee about the closure of institutions for security reasons (e.g. fire brigade, pollution or dangerous weather)!
Immediate and appropriate medical care, either on site or in the next medical facility, for all injured workers!
Accommodation, including new jobs, for all injured employees as long as necessary!
Financial compensation and leisure correspond to the employee's violation!
Employee monitoring of air quality in the warehouse!
Universal distribution of personal protective equipment in the event of outbreaks of infectious diseases!
Distribution of safety equipment (e.g. safety glasses, gloves, helmets, earplugs) to all workers who need it!

The IAWV only suggests this as the first step in a movement that defeats the working class against the corporate oligarchy. Ultimately, Amazon and other huge companies have to be dismantled and managed by the employees themselves in order to meet human needs and not to benefit. The Logistics Network from Amazon and Hi Tech Innovations can then be used to quickly move goods to where people need them the most to eliminate poverty and other social problems.

Rank and file campaign compared to bureaucratic betrayal

The Amazon union (ALU), which the JFK8 workers chose for them three years ago, did not do anything to prevent this increasing burden on injuries and deaths. The union was founded after the workers of Christian Smalls protested against uncertain conditions in the early days of Covid 19 pandemic. Amazon fired Smalls for his action. This incident itself shows that waiting for the Amazon management leads to its senses, the workers will not lead anywhere. Changes will only come if the employees take the initiative to enforce safe working conditions themselves.

After death, the aluminum submitted an explanation in which a number of claims were raised, a starting wage of $ 30 an hour, 180 hours paid leisure, one hour and two 20-minute paid breaks per shift, lower productivity rates and a revision of the process for granting accommodations to injured employees. The union announced that it would start her next campaign in the coming days and weeks. It added that “the next big action earlier than we think.” But there were no details about nature or the time of the action.

This is the first time that ALU made the demands for the conditions at the workplace since they won the union elections in spring 2022. While these demands are legitimate, the Alu officials have no strategy to win them. If these words are to be made well, the employees of Amazon employees have to prepare for the enforcement of their democratic will through action at the workplace.

Alu won his choice because the workers regarded it as a ranking alternative to the existing, bureaucratically controlled unions that are connected to the political establishment. But within a few days after the vote, it began to develop corrupt relationships with democratic politicians and bureaucrats from the team stars and other unions. In the meantime, the employees have no contract three years later and Alu has not proposed any serious measures to win you.

As a result, the connections of the union to rank and the file quickly evaporated and last year culminated in the decision to merge with the team stars. As a result, JFK8 workers were brought into an organization, the civil servants of which have enforced decades of sales, including one contract at UPS two years ago, which led to tens of thousands of layoffs and his refusal, to designate a strike of railway workers at the end of 2022 to buy the congress period in advance.

Under Team Star General President Sean O'Brien, the union is one of several who have accepted Trump, and lies that the fascist billionaire as a friend for the workers and his racist “America First” hugged nationalism and attacks on immigrants. Nothing shows the employees who claim that the hostility of the union officials who represent them as their support for a potential dictator.

The participation of the teamers in union drive at Amazon is only to strengthen their own fee base. In a strike in December last December, which included several Amazon facilities in New York, he initially left the workers behind at JFK8 at the workplace and isolated the country's most militant warehouse.

JFK8 workers have to escape the bureaucratic bonds and combine with workers in the team stars across the country and the working class across the world. A real, fighting unity of the global Amazon workforce can only be set up in contrast to the tricky trade union guidance by an independent organization.

To take over this fight, contact the socialist website worldwide at wsws.org/workers.

Amazon's Dirty Record

For the control of employees through security!

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