More than 100 people left, Amazon employees quit again!

Recently, workers in Europe and the United States have frequently gone on strike, causing logistics to be paralyzed. According to foreign media reports, just yesterday ( August 15), more than 100 Amazon employees at the Amazon Air Center in San Bernardino, California, abandoned their workstations midway due to low wages and concerns about heat safety.

Amazon's growing air-freight division uses Prime-branded planes to deliver packages and goods across the country, much like UPS or FedEx. The independently organized workers said they do not plan to return to work on Monday to pressure Amazon to raise wages and make workplaces safer.

Marc Wulfraat, an industry consultant who tracks Amazon's facilities around the world , said the San Bernardino air hub is one of the most important hubs for Amazon's logistics nationwide, and is more important to Amazon than a warehouse that Amazon can bypass in the event of a disruption. The facility is a regional hub that funnels customer orders from around the country to the West Coast outpost. Recent data shows the facility oversees about seven flights a day to and from the East Coast, Midwest, Texas and the Pacific Northwest.

More than 150 people walked out Monday afternoon , department organizers said. Amazon relies heavily on several air hubs to keep shipping millions of packages a day, and while a small number of the 1,500 employees who work shifts at the center walked out, such a stoppage could cause logistical problems and disruptions that would have a greater impact than similar actions at regional warehouses.

One worker said that with the rising cost of living for all of them, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make ends meet on $17.30 an hour. In addition to demanding a wage increase, the workers are also demanding better heat safety measures, as temperatures have often reached high levels this summer, often leading to heat-related illnesses, especially for workers who load and unload aircraft outdoors.

Four workers involved in organizing efforts described tough working conditions, with two saying they experienced heat-induced nosebleeds this summer, one saying she hit her head on a shipping container and suffered a concussion, and one strike leader, Daniel Rivera, saying air conditioning could only be felt in certain areas.

Workers said they have been meeting in recent months in airline hub lounges, workers' homes, restaurants and a community center in San Bernardino to discuss working conditions. After months of organizing inside and outside the warehouse, the group presented a petition to warehouse management in July that had more than 800 signatures from factory workers. They asked for a $5 hourly pay increase and a series of smaller pay increases for workers with specific job titles and night shifts.

Apparently, these workers’ petitions have not been answered to their satisfaction. This small-scale strike shows that pro-union sentiment is spreading throughout Amazon’s ranks, this time erupting at a uniquely vulnerable point in its logistics network.

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