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By Mark Gruenberg
Dangerous pandemic-caused working conditions at warehouses, in the “gig economy,” and at big box stores are forcing tens of thousands of workers at six large firms – Amazon, Walmart, FedEx, Target, Instacart, Shipt, and Whole Foods – into a walkout during their lunch breaks on May 1. Depending upon the final totals who walk out, it would be the largest U.S. job action in decades.
“Shut down AMAZON, these facilities have positive cases unsafe working environments infecting thousands!” tweeted Christian Smalls, the ex-warehouse assistant supervisor who led a mid-March walkout from an Amazon warehouse in New York over lack of protection against the coronavirus, which has sickened more than 1.1 million people in the U.S. and killed more than 60,000 so far.
That was Smalls’s second tweet to @Shut_down Amazon. “It’s time to join up! Protect all workers at all cost we are not expandable or replaceable enough is enough TAKE THE POWER BACK!” he tweeted before. True to form, anti-union, anti-worker Amazon fired Smalls the afternoon of that walkout, then tried to peddle a trumped-up excuse that his lack of protection threatened his colleagues.
He’s now one of the top organizers of the lunchtime walkout, along with workers at Shipt (Wally Solis), Instacart (Vanessa Bain) and Whole Foods. Social media sites for the three organizers, plus one for Whole Foods workers as a group, have information on the walkout.
“This a matter of life or death, but companies like Amazon have not been transparent or honest with workers, the media, or the public about the number of cases in their facilities,” their release said. When cases in one Amazon warehouse hit double digits, the company stops releasing a count and just refers to “additional cases,” the release added....
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