Teen Vogue has a really interesting story entitled, “What It’s Like To Organize My Amazon Warehouse As A Young Queer Person.”
The piece is by Ash Judd, described as “a 20-year-old queer person who has worked at the Amazon STL8 warehouse in St. Peters, Missouri, since December 2021.”
Here’s how Judd sets up the story:
“I never thought I would organize a union in my workplace. I grew up in a conservative Mormon household, but thankfully, my family was not the only source of information that I had access to. There were plenty of books, movies, and TV shows that helped me form my own opinions on fighting injustice through teamwork.
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had other rules while I was growing up: Don’t date until you’re 16; marriage is between a man and a woman; the list goes on. I kept parts of myself under wraps to survive.
“But after I got a job at an Amazon warehouse, I began experimenting with my gender presentation. I joined Glamazon, an affinity group for LGBTQIA+ employees. While Glamazon made the workplace more inclusive for LGBTQIA+ people in some ways, it ultimately didn’t seem geared towards the transformative change I was seeking.
“Sometimes that meant we had to take on the responsibility to support each other. One time, a trans coworker had shared with me his frustration that the men’s bathrooms don’t have menstrual products, so some coworkers and I made boxes of menstrual products and put them in the men’s facilities. When we noticed those boxes were removed, I expressed my concerns to a trusted queer manager, and eventually the products were placed in all the bathrooms.”
If navigating LGBTQIA+ issues at work was one challenge, Judd also found that there were other workplace problems that needed to be addressed:
“My job is physically demanding, with 10-hour shifts that keep me on my feet all day with minimal break time (two half-hour breaks), and using a pallet jack to move items at a pace that an OSHA official said are “designed for speed, not safety.” I’m too young for my joints to give out the way they do. As a result, I switched to reduced hours after a year — despite needing the extra income — because working full-time meant being constantly exhausted and in pain.
“I was far from the only Amazon STL8 worker who saw the urgent need for safer work: Many of us workers find the rates unsustainable and inhumane, we are overworked to the point of constant stress and exhaustion, the repetitive movements required of us result in joint and soft tissue injuries, and AmCare, our in-house health clinic, often rushes us back to the floor without sufficient time and care to recover from job-related injuries.”
Getting involved with labor organizers at the warehouse, Judd writes, “revealed that the real community I was interested in building at Amazon was with people who were brave enough to fight for higher pay, safer work, and a union. I realized that forming a union is one of the most effective ways for workers — LGBTQIA+ and beyond — to tackle discrimination, poverty, and income inequality … It could help me, a queer and non-binary worker with things like: better pay, preventing forms of harassment like misgendering and identity-based discrimination when it comes to job security and promotions, and guaranteeing access to bathrooms that correspond with my gender identity.”
Judd writes that “our Organizing Committee has already notched some key milestones in our journey to unionizing. We’ve confronted management to demand things like more reasonable work rates and clean drinking water … and we filed an OSHA complaint and have been leading inspectors through our warehouse to look into worker alleged mistreatment by AmCare, Amazon’s in-house health facility.”
And, Judd writes, “I’m committed to leading the way in making sure our organizing committee celebrates diversity and guarantees the respect, safety, and dignity of every worker. Because queer and trans rights are workers’ rights, and as the labor movement saying goes, an injury to one is an injury to all.”
Teen Vogue reached out to Amazon for comment, and a spokesperson said, “Not only does STL8 have a consistent track record of safety improvement and an injury rate well below the industry average, but our employees also routinely tell us in anonymous surveys that they believe they have a safe work environment.” The spokesperson also said that “employees are not rushed out of AmCare facilities and are given ample time to recover; that all restrooms at the STL8 facility have menstrual sanitary products; and that Amazon disagrees with the OSHA citation issued to STL8 and has appealed it.”
KC’s View:
It strikes me as entirely possible that a spokesperson in Seattle has no idea what the reality on the ground is in Missouri. In fact, probable. So I’m not sure I entirely buy the denials.
That said, I’m really glad that Judd wrote this piece. It is an unique perspective on a couple of worlds that I do not completely understand, voicing concerns that I’ve never had to think about it. Illumination about such things always is a good idea. It makes one a better human being.
Judd makes the point that “during record attacks on the rights of trans and queer people in Missouri and across America, we are educating OC members on how the far right and ruling class have wielded manufactured queerphobia to divide workers throughout history.”
That’s an inherently political statement that will annoy some folks. But I prefer to see it as a human being, with all the same rights that we all deserve, seeking dignity in both work and life.
The post Seeking Dignity In Life & In An Amazon Warehouse appeared first on MNB.
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