Employees backing the union effort said that the issues at thewarehouse include safety concerns, inadequate pay, and 12-hourshifts with insufficient breaks and unreasonable hourly quotas.(Photo: Shutterstock)

A committee of employees at Amazon's recently opened StatenIsland fulfillment center is going public with a unionization campaign, a fresh challenge to the e-commercegiant in a city where it plans to build a major new campus.

Labor unrest is the latest complication in Amazon's plan toinvest $2.5 billion and hire 25,000 people in the city over thenext 15 years. Several New York City politicians who were shut outof negotiations handled by the governor and mayor have raisedobjections to a new office park in Queens that threatens tooverload mass transit and drive up rents in analready expensive housing market.

Related: Unions pressing companies to divulge tax windfallplans

Now workers in a another borough are saying the company treatsthem like robots and should be focused on improving conditions there rather than rakingin tax breaks to build a new headquarters.

The union they're working with sees the up to $3 billion inincentives offered to bring an Amazon office campus to Long IslandCity as leverage to prevent the company from retaliating againstthem for organizing.

Employees backing the union effort said in interviews Tuesdaythat the issues at the warehouse include safety concerns,inadequate pay, and 12-hour shifts with insufficient breaks andunreasonable hourly quotas, after which they lose more of their daywaiting unpaid in long lines for security checks.

“They talk to you like you're nothing — all they care about istheir numbers,” said Rashad Long, who makes $18.60 an hour andcommutes four hours a day to work at the warehouse. “They talk toyou like you're a robot.”

A handful of pro-union Amazon employees joined communityactivists and elected officials at a City Hall press conferenceWednesday prior to a city council hearing about the proposed majoroffice development in Queens. There, New York City ComptrollerScott Stringer denounced the government's “bad deal” with Amazon,asking, “What do the people get, and what are the workers going toget? Where is the labor agreement?”

Inside, a small group was threatened with being ejected from thecouncil gallery when they chanted slogans and disruptedproceedings.

Brian Huseman, Amazon's head of public policy, told City CouncilSpeaker Corey Johnson, “We absolutely respect the right of anyemployee to join a union.” Another Amazon executive told thecouncil the company expects to work with unionized constructioncrews on the Queens development.

James Patchett, president of NYC Economic Development Corp.,voiced concern about “some of the reports that we've seen,” butsaid his organization is excited that Amazon is bringing jobs tothe city.

Amazon spokeswoman Rachael Lighty said in an email that thecompany “follows all state employment laws,” including restrictingemployees' hours to 60 at most per week. She said that during theextra-busy “peak” season, many employees welcome the opportunity towork extra hours at the overtime rate, which at the Staten Islandfacility is $26.25 to $34.50 an hour.

Not all Staten Island workers see it that way. Sharon Bleachsaid in an interview that she's insulted by the company's “powerhours” in which employees are pressured to move extra fast in hopesof winning raffle tickets.

“Every day they're changing the goal — the finish line ischanged every day,” Bleach said.

Amazon said incentives offered by the company “are part of ourcompany culture, and we want to make sure Peak is a fun time ofyear for associates who are working hard to fulfill customerorders.”

Tax breaks

Amazon is slated to reap more than $1 billion in tax breaks andgrants from New York as part of the Long Island City deal. Somelawmakers have said the state's Public Authorities Control Boardshould reject the development unless the company makes strongercommitments in areas including infrastructure investment, housingaffordability and worker rights.

Employees are working with the Retail, Wholesale and DepartmentStore Union, or RWDSU, which has also backed organizing efforts atthe Whole Foods grocery chain that Amazon acquired last year.Amazon's workforce is union-free throughout the U.S..

“There's never been greater leverage — if taxpayers are givingAmazon $3 billion, then taxpayers have the right to demand thatAmazon stop being a union-busting company,” said RWDSU's president,Stuart Appelbaum. “It's incumbent upon the governor and the mayorto make sure that nothing happens to these workers who are standingup for their rights. If Amazon continues its union-bustingactivities in New York, they should call off the deal.”

RWDSU has been meeting workers in person and contacting themover social media since around the time the Staten Island facilityopened. Appelbaum declined to discuss the specifics of how Amazonemployees were seeking to obtain union recognition, but said thecompany should “sit down with workers and their representatives” todiscuss how to address their concerns.

Federal labor law

Federal labor law restricts city and state governments' abilityto directly regulate union organizing and anti-union activities inthe private sector. But the law allows local governments to mandateother employment rules like higher pay or predictable schedules,and leaves some leeway for them to require “labor peace” when thegovernment's own funds are involved.

Amazon's months-long, continent-wide search for a new campussite spurred cities to outdo each other in lavishing perks on thecompany, but also fueled heightened scrutiny on how it treatsemployees. In October, following pressure from progressives likeU.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Amazon announced it would institute anationwide $15 minimum wage for its employees, though that changecame with elimination of some bonuses and stock awards and didn'textend to workers it classifies as independent contractors.

While Sanders, a Vermont independent, praised the company's newwage floor, he and Senator Elizabeth Warren, a MassachusettsDemocrat, wrote in an Oct. 16 letter to Chief Executive OfficerJeff Bezos that an anti-union video used by Amazon appeared toviolate federal labor law.

Training video

Some managers at Whole Foods were shown an Amazon training videohighlighting strategies to detect and discourage organizingefforts. The senators said the video, which tells supervisors theymay “need to talk about how having a union could hurt innovation,which could hurt customer obsession, which could ultimatelythreaten the building's continued existence,” seemed to be tellingthem to make illegal threats.

The video said that unions could hinder the company's ability toquickly make changes to operations in its warehouse networkdesigned to speed the delivery of packages to customers. “When welose sight of those critical focus areas, we jeopardize everyone'sjob security,” says a voice on the video belonging to a cartoonishavatar dressed as an Amazon warehouse manager.

A group of East African workers at an Amazon warehouse inMinnesota — with backing from the Service Employees InternationalUnion and a chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations —have been organizing around issues including Ramadanaccommodations. They secured private meetings with management inrecent months, an incremental but unusual development.

Last month on Black Friday, one of the busiest online shoppingdays of the year, Amazon workers at fulfillment centers in Germany,Spain and France mounted strikes, and protests were held in Italyand the U.K. Amazon said those European demonstrations didn'tdisrupt its operations.

Successfully organizing Amazon in the U.S. could requiremillions of dollars and decades of time to accomplish, HectorFigueroa, president of SEIU's East Coast property servicesaffiliate, said in May. “By the time you end, it will not be Amazon– it will be something else that will be the new way that peoplebuy things.”

What else is Amazon upto? 

• 2018: The year of Amazon
• Caving to pressure, Amazon announces $15 minimumwage
• Automation comes for Amazon's white-collarworkers

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