San Bernardino Amazon workers walk off the job, demanding higher pay and improved working conditions

On Monday, August 15, dozens of San Bernardino Amazon warehouse workers at the company’s largest air freight facility on the West Coast walked off the job, seeking higher pay and safer working conditions. The work stoppage is the product of months of organizing by an independent group of warehouse workers called Inland Empire Amazon Workers United. The group has received organizing assistance from the Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC) and Teamsters Local 1932, two local labor organizations.

This past July, members of the independent warehouse workers group delivered a petition with more than 800 signatures to the air hub’s management. The petition outlined how average rent prices in San Bernardino would require a full-time Amazon air hub worker earning a starting wage of $17 an hour to pay roughly 75 percent of their monthly income post-taxes on rent.

Workers at the San Bernardino facility have also expressed concern about brutal working conditions caused by excessive heat, especially during the summer months when temperatures at the airport regularly reach 95 degrees.

The walkout is part of a broader wave of labor organizing campaigns across the country at Amazon warehouses. In April, employees at a massive Amazon warehouse in Staten Island voted by a wide margin to form a union, the first successful unionization attempt by Amazon workers in the company’s history. Since then, at least two other Amazon facilities have either held a vote to form a union or are nearing a vote. San Bernardino workers who participated in the stoppage on Monday don’t have immediate plans to file for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board, but said they would consider filing for a formal election in the future.
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Teukolsky Law stands in solidarity with the brave warehouse workers in San Bernardino who are willing to put their jobs on the line to improve working conditions and wages not only for themselves, but for all of their fellow workers.  If you are an Amazon worker who has been treated unlawfully at work, contact Teukolsky Law today for a free consultation. 

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