Amazon fires two employees tied to Staten Island union effort

Amazon fires two employees in connection with organizational campaign that led to the company’s first union warehouse in the United States

Matt Cusick and Tristan Dachin told CNBC they had been fired by Amazon in recent days. Both Kusik and Dutchin are working with the Amazon Labor Union, a new group led by current and former employees of the company to organize workers in the warehouses of e-commerce giant Staten Island in New York.

ALU celebrated a historic victory last month when workers at Amazon’s largest warehouse in New York, known as JFK8, voted to join the union. ALU had hoped to repeat its success at a smaller facility nearby called LDJ5, but the site rejected the merger last week. However, the victory in JFK8 stimulated efforts to organize in other Amazon warehouses, and ALU received high acclaim, especially from President Joe Biden.

Duchin, who has worked as a package collector at JFK8 for almost a year, said he was fired on Saturday after completing his shift. Amazon told him it had failed to meet the company’s performance targets, which require employees to select hundreds of packages per hour.

Duchin said he had received previous warnings from Amazon about his performance, but has since received additional training. Duchin said his manager even congratulated him recently on his improved performance.

Short, who serves as ALU’s communications director, said he was fired last week after being on “Covid care leave”, which allows employees to care for family members with Covid-19 .

An employee of Amazon’s human resources department allowed him to go on vacation until April 29, Short said. But on April 30, he received an email from Amazon saying he had been absent from work for three days, which led to his dismissal, Cusick said.

The next day, Short, who was sorting delivery packages at an Amazon facility called DYY6 near JFK8, discovered he had been locked up by Amazon’s internal employee portal.

“I called the ERC,” Cusick said, referring to the staff resource center, “and I said, ‘What’s going on, I think I’m terminated.'”

“I think the first person may have said I wasn’t fired,” he said. “

On May 3, Cusick received a letter from Amazon informing him that he had been fired “for quitting his job,” according to a copy of the letter from CNBC.

Amazon’s human resources systems have been tested in the past. Investigations by The New York Times and Bloomberg have identified problems with the highly automated system, which struggled to keep pace with the company’s fast-growing workforce, especially during the coronavirus pandemic.

Short briefed his dismissal as an “automatic termination.”

“Amazon’s systems are almost entirely digital,” Cusick said. “I was locked up by the system where all this material is stored. I’m locked out of the building, so I can’t even go to the building where I work to talk to the people inside.

Vice reported earlier on the shots. It is unclear whether the layoffs were revenge for workers’ efforts to organize, and Amazon officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Amazon had previously fired employees who were outspoken critics of the company’s labor practices, including Chris Smalls, president of the ALU. Amazon was recently ordered to reinstate JFK8 employee Gerald Bryson after a judge ruled that the company had “illegally” fired him two years ago for participating in a pandemic protest.

“I did interviews, I went to rallies,” Dachin said. “I’m part of the ALU and I’m in the national titles, they pay attention to these things.”

The union’s victory in JFK8 was a major victory for the working groups that sought to organize Amazon’s facilities for several years. For ALU, the challenges are not over, as it must now try to negotiate collective bargaining with Amazon, which has already tried to postpone the agreement by challenging the outcome of the election in court.

In addition to the dismissal of an organizer at JFK8, the company has made changes to the top ranks of the site in recent days.

Amazon fired at least half a dozen senior executives at JFK8 last week, The New York Times reported. Amazon spokesman Kelly Nantel said the layoffs were the result of several weeks of “operations and leadership” assessments at JFK8. But the sacked managers saw the move as a response to the union’s recent victory, according to the Times.

While Amazon may be legally allowed to fire managers who are not part of the bargaining unit, the company may face further battle with the National Labor Council to fire union organizers, said Tom Kochan, a professor at the school. in MIT Sloan Management.

“Obviously, it is immoral to fire union organizers in violation of the law, but it can pay off for the company to do so because the penalties are so weak,” Kochan said. “It is also very difficult to enforce the law to prove that a worker has been fired for union activity instead of failing to show up on time or in some way doing the job effectively.”

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