If you can, avoid using Amazon, Instacart, Whole Foods, Walmart, Target and FedEx tomorrow, as their workers are planning a walk-off to protest their employers’ unprecedented profits, which are coming at the cost of employees’ health and safety. On Friday, May 1, employees will either call in sick or walk off the job during their lunch break.
U.S. has weak labor protections
As we’ve reported before, when it comes to labor protections, the U.S. ranks at the bottom of developed countries. This includes unemployment benefits, workplace protections, as well as weakened collective bargaining powers.
When it comes to staying safe, and weathering job losses, workers don’t have a lot of options, a fact that has become especially stark these past few months, especially given the Department of Labor’s recently issued announcement that employees who refuse to work out of a general sense of fear are ineligible for pandemic unemployment assistance.
For a lot of the workers who are preparing to walk off the job, their demands have been simple: personal protective gear, health care benefits, paid leave, and hazard pay.
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Demands for safer conditions still unanswered
Workers’ demands have, to a large extent, gone unanswered. For example, although Instacart supposedly offers paid sick leave to workers who get sick with COVID-19, accessing it is almost impossible, as they don’t accept doctor’s notes.
These issues aren’t unique to a single company or industry, a fact that the organizers of this latest effort acknowledge.
In addition to dealing with hazardous working conditions and inadequate pay, workers are also watching their employers get richer off their hard work. Jeff Bezos’ net worth has increased by an estimated $25 billion since the start of this pandemic, all while his workers have reported inadequate pay and hazardous working conditions. Bezos is not an outlier—since the start of the pandemic, the billionaire class has added $308 billion to their net worth, at the same time unemployment claims have topped 26 million in the past five weeks.
