Amazon fires senior managers tied to unionised warehouses

NEW YORK, May 08 (The New York Times): After Amazon employees at a massive warehouse on Staten Island scored an upset union victory last month, it turned the union's leaders into celebrities, sent shock waves through the broader labour movement and prompted politicians around the country to rally behind Amazon workers. Now it also appears to have created fallout within Amazon's management ranks.
On Thursday, Amazon informed more than a half-dozen senior managers involved with the Staten Island warehouse that they were being fired, said four current and former employees with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
The firings, which occurred outside the company's typical employee review cycle, were seen by the managers and other people who work at the facility as a response to the victory by the Amazon Labor Union, three of the people said. Workers at the warehouse voted by a wide margin to form the first union at the company in the United States, in one of the biggest victories for organised labour in at least a generation.
Word of the shake-up spread through the warehouse Thursday. Many of the managers had been responsible for carrying out the company's response to the unionisation effort. Several were veterans of the company, with more than six years of experience, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
Workers who supported the union complained that the company's health and safety protocols were too lax, particularly as they related to Covid-19 and repetitive strain injuries, and that the company pushed them too hard to meet performance targets, often at the expense of sufficient breaks.
Many also said that pay at the warehouse, which starts at more than $18 per hour for full-time workers, was too low to live on in New York City.
An Amazon spokesperson said the company had made the management changes after spending several weeks evaluating aspects of the "operations and leadership" at JFK8, which is the company's name for the warehouse. "Part of our culture at Amazon is to continually improve, and we believe it's important to take time to review whether or not we're doing the best we could be for our team," said Kelly Nantel, the spokesperson.