Delivery Drivers, Warehouse Workers, Home Health Aides, Landscapers, and Gig Workers Deserve a Raise and Job Protection
Instacart shoppers, Amazon workers and others have engaged in work stoppages this past week, some long term, some for a single day, but all focused on the ways in which the new-economy companies for whom they work are taking advantage of them, paying them little but expecting them to continue engaging in physically stressful or potentially dangerous work.
We don’t often think of the delivery people and store clerks we interact with everyday as heroes. But they are, in so many senses of the word. And like their counterparts in the health industry, most remain underpaid and overworked even as they are forced to toil in unhealthy and sometimes dangerous conditions.
At Amazon, workers have long reported harsh work conditions — tight control of work pace, limited breaks, repetitive stress injuries — that have been exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis,, which has turned the the month of March into a reprise of the Christmas season. Workers walked out of a Staten Island warehouse in one-day protest, which was met by Amazon firing the organizer and issuing public statements about how much they care for their employees.
Workers at Whole Foods and Instacart also walked out to protest a lack of protective gear and obscenely low pay. Other who work new-economy gig jobs are striking for the same reason.
And, make a no mistake, these are strikes.
Read the full story at Medium.
Hank Kalet 