Coming not a moment too soon to America, Amazon warehouse workers are set to protest ‘inhuman’ working conditions in planned demonstrations across Europe on Black Friday.
Hundreds of Amazon employees are working with the British trade union GMB and planning to gather outside five of the website’s fulfillment centers on Friday. Meanwhile, in Italy and Spain, a 24-hour strike is planned. […]
GMB spokesman Tim Roache told Business Insider that the workers were not trying to disrupt Black Friday sales, but simply attempting to raise awareness about the “frankly inhuman” working conditions. The goal, he said is to “get Amazon around the table” for workers’ voices to be heard.
People are “breaking bones, being knocked unconscious, and being taken away in ambulances,” he said.
The GMB reported last year that ambulances were called to Amazon warehouses in an incredible 600 times in the last three years for incidents including electric shocks, exhaustion, chest pains, major trauma — and on three occasions even pregnancy-related issues. “At a similar sized supermarket distribution warehouse a few miles away, there were just eight call outs during the same period,” the GMB said at the time.
The GMB gathered disturbing statements from Amazon employees in advance of the protests.
One pregnant woman reported that she is forced to “stand 10 hours without a chair” and told to work hard, despite her superiors knowing she is pregnant. Another described Amazon as “an awful place to work” where people “can’t breath or voice an opinion” and “feel like a trapped animal with lack of support and respect.”
Biggest losers: Kochs, Bezos, Brin, Cuckersperg, Cook
Biggest winners: nationhood, the 99%, mom and pop stores, flyover country
Status TBD: ethnonationalism, Trump
If Trump is smart (anyone noticing the pattern yet?), he’ll get ahead of this populism revolt and lead it, before it gets ahead of him, because the revolution is coming, with or without his leadership.
[crypto-donation-box]
