Front Burner - Behind the Amazon union drive

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

As Amazon’s profits soar during the pandemic, The Fifth Estate’s Mark Kelley gives us an inside look at the dire conditions inside its warehouses that are driving workers’ to unionize.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Angela Starrett filling in for Jamie Poisson. So remember that time when Jeff Bezos spent $5.5 billion to go to space for 10 minutes? I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this. The pandemic was good to Bezos.

Femmick was good to Bezos. In 2020 alone, with so many people at home under lockdown ordering everything to their doorsteps, Amazon cleaned up. Its net profit jumped 84 percent from $11 billion to $21 billion. But inside Amazon's warehouses, things were looking bleak. My employees in my department were showing up with different symptoms. I knew something was wrong. There was something in this building. And I knew that the virus was already here. That's Chris Smalls.

He was a supervisor at the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York. And when management told me that somebody did test positive and not to tell any of the employees that somebody was positive, that's when I took my stance. They didn't want to hinder their business. You know, it was business as usual. And if you tell the employees that somebody's positive, obviously there's going to be an uproar. Workers are going to be afraid to come to work. And that will stop their productivity.

When he thought that Amazon wasn't doing anything to stop the spread of COVID, he rallied together a group of workers to pressure management to shut the warehouse down. They knew not telling the employees was a way for them to keep their operations going. And I felt that was just completely wrong. a way for them to keep their operations going. And I felt that was just completely wrong. Amazon fired Smalls, he says, because he spoke out. They say it was because he broke quarantine. I was siding with my employees over management, and that's the reason why I believe they terminated me. Now Smalls has become the face of the union drive in Staten Island. But so far, every effort by workers in North America

to unionize has failed, crushed by Amazon. Today, we're talking to the Fifth Estate's Mark Kelly on his investigation into Amazon's treatment of its workers throughout the pandemic and how the company resisted attempts by its employees to come together and push back. Hey, Mark. Thanks for being here. Angela, good to be here.

So we just heard there from Chris Smalls, that's the former Amazon supervisor in Staten Island on what it was like, how workers were treated inside warehouses during the pandemic. What else did you hear from employees on this front? Well, Angela, let me answer your question with a question. Have you ever seen one of these Amazon warehouses? They call them fulfillment centers. Have you actually ever driven by one or seen one with your own eyes? I've seen the outside and through your dock. I've seen the inside of one. So it's like a giant warehouse.

Yeah, but I want to give just for the listeners a sense of scale here. These things are massive. And they've been compared to three aircraft carriers big. It's a million square feet. They're so big, it almost defies a way to convey how big they are unless you've seen them. So, I mean, I think that's the first thing. Once you understand how big these things are, you understand the inherent problems that will exist there during a pandemic. Namely, the fact that in some of these warehouses, they employ about 1,500 people.

So you imagine, and they're on different shifts, but people are arriving at the same time, they're leaving at the same time, they're having breaks at the same time, they're having lunch at the same time. When you have that many workers, therein lies the difficulty during a pandemic. With so many people there congregating. That was the big problem. And that's what made it so difficult really to tame the pandemic in places like Amazon. And then you take that, compound that with the fact that the demand is increasing. So there's a lot of pressure on these people to be there, to be on the line in their shifts. And Amazon needed them more

than ever. So the bottom line of what we were hearing was there were just simply too many people inside there to have proper social distancing. Not enough done to enforce social distancing, because people were sort of going back to their old habits and how they work. So you've got people on the line that are sorting, and you've got people across from you on that line that are also sorting. So you'd have four, five, six, eight people together, bunched together doing their jobs. And that was the problem that Amazon was trying to figure out.

In the interim, people were getting sick. Right. And I want to talk more about the treatment of workers in general, but I want to talk about this in the context of Canada. Sure. As part of your investigation, you spoke to employees that worked at Amazon's warehouse in Brampton, Ontario. What did they tell you about what was going on there? Yeah, well, Brampton, and the reason we chose the Brampton warehouse is because, first of all, Amazon doesn't make the COVID cases, the number of COVID cases, workers who came down with COVID, they did not make that information public. So it was hard for us to get a handle on what the national portrait was. But there was an exception in Brampton, because Brampton is where Peel

Regional Health got involved. And here was a fascinating story where, again, one of these massive warehouses. And people were getting sick. And workers noticed, and we interviewed some of the workers, who noticed they would look all around them and they would just see, you know, all of a sudden their co-worker wasn't showing up. People were dropping one by one as they were getting sick. When you heard that the warehouse in Brampton had been closed down by public health, were you surprised by that? No, I wasn't surprised.

I was expecting it to be closed long before because every week you were hearing how many persons come down with COVID, the test positive. There was not a single week where they said, well, zero. How did that make you feel? Very much scared because I never know

when it's going to be my turn. And there again, this was about the lack of social distancing, the lack of enforcing COVID protocols, that Amazon wasn't doing it. And what's important to note here, at Brampton, we're talking a full year into the pandemic. So there's no reason to say, well, you know, we're trying to figure it out. We had figured it out at that point what needed to be done. And the bottom line was certainly at that Brampton warehouse, it wasn't happening. 600 people, there were 600 cases of people getting sick there. I mean, why was this happening? Of course, people were going to get sick, but why did so many people have to get sick? And that was the question we had. But it came down to it where workers said,

look, we have a solution. We know what it'll take. Fewer workers need to be on the line. And Amazon did not accept that idea. Why? Because fewer workers means you can process fewer parcels, which means you're making fewer profits. And that's where so many of the workers said, you know, Amazon puts profits ahead of people. They could have reduced the number of people working day to day, but they chose not to to keep up with the exploding consumer demand. So what happens? People get sick.

And eventually it was forced to shut down by that local health authority, right? It was. But here's the interesting thing. This wasn't Amazon sort of, you know, waving the flag and saying, we've got a problem on our hands here. And what we learned during our investigation, it was actually the Brampton municipal bus drivers who were the ones who first keyed on to what was going on in this warehouse. They were noticing as they stopped to pick up workers at the end of the shift, they were noticing these workers getting on their buses who were sick.

Or in the mornings, when they were taking them to work, they were noticing the passengers on their bus were sick. So the drivers, you know, out of a sense of self-preservation, they decided amongst themselves, we're not going to do the Amazon route anymore because we're putting ourselves at risk. They then complained to the mayor of Brampton, Patrick Brown, to say, we got a problem on our hands here. People are sick and nobody's doing anything about this.

As cases declined in the rest of the region, at this Amazon warehouse, they exploded. It's now closing. Wow. And I mean, there was pressure to keep it open. I understand that an estimated 40% of everything ordered on Amazon in Canada actually goes through this Brampton warehouse. So there government, they were saying you have to keep it open. Because, I mean, remember, how soon we forget. But at this point, and this is in the spring, so many of us were still working from home. But in this case, the Amazon workers were deemed to be, quote, essential workers. So Patrick Brown was told you cannot close this down because they are essential to the economy. It was bewildering the influence that some of these large international companies had

and their ability to operate on a base. If you look at the mentality in Ottawa, Queen's Park, it really gave an exemption to these supply chains. So when we're being told to stay home and stay safe, these folks are being sent into these massive warehouses where, as we say, many of them were sick and that was bound to spread. And there were outbreaks not just in Brampton, but at other warehouses. When those outbreaks started to hit the news, how did Amazon respond to those? Yeah, well, I mean, clearly they were sensitive to the bad news that was coming out. And you're right, it wasn't just, I mean, we chose Brampton because that was really the worst case scenario that we could find out about. But what they did do is they invested, or they told us,

that they invested $11 billion worldwide to protect workers during COVID. You know, they brought in science, they brought in epidemiologists, they brought in temperature tests the minute you were coming in and out of the door, just to keep a scale, an idea, a track on their workers. They installed cameras to monitor distancing. They even, which I thought was pioneering, is they brought in the COVID rapid testing on site. They were one of the first employers to do that, to get on site COVID rapid testing as they tried to get a handle on this. And they put out videos to reassure not only the workers, but their customers as well, that they were being proactive and trying to protect their workers. Wow. You say they invested more than $11 billion worldwide.

All these measures like rapid testing put in place. Did any of that make a difference? Well, it had to. I mean, I'm in no position to be able to quantify the difference it would make, but there's no doubt that once they brought these measures in that I'm sure they were going to make a difference. But the issue that workers spoke to us about was about getting paid sick days. This is what it came down to. And that money that was invested had nothing to do with paid sick days. You know, we spoke to workers who said they made the choice between

admitting that they were sick and having to stay home and not get paid, which they said they couldn't afford to do. So they would try to hide the fact that they were sick so that they could continue to work because they're in precarious situations. There's so many, there are new Canadians, there are students who are working there, there are people who desperately needed the work, and they chose the paycheck over staying home. And, you know, so many labor advocates were saying, why did these folks have to make that

choice? They should be allowed to be paid to stay home, have those paid sick days. And that wasn't the case. and many say that that exacerbated the problem so why would someone complain why people tell you if i'm not feeling well i would imagine if if people think that they may have coped and they know that they're not going to get paid they're not going to tell their managers they have COVID. Is that happening? Yeah, that was the same feeling I had when I told my manager that even next time if I'm not feeling well, even if I know that I have COVID symptoms or I'm positive, I'm not going to tell you because you're not paying me. Another consequence of Amazon's success during the pandemic meant

the demand for online deliveries, you know, shot through the roof. What were delivery workers dealing with here? It's really interesting because I'm sure, you know, so many of your listeners use Amazon right now. And we all do. There are few companies that are as ubiquitous as Amazon. But what we don't really realize, and it was the drivers who told me this, is it's like these packages don't magically appear at your front door or your front doorstep. I mean, there's a whole process. And we were speaking to delivery drivers here in Canada. Amazon doesn't have its own delivery drivers in Canada. They do in the US, but not here. So what they'll do is

they'll contract out. They'll get a third party to deliver packages for Amazon. I was talking to two guys. They worked at two different companies that put about 200 packages in the truck. And what you had to do is once you left in the morning, you had to deliver those 200 packages. I mean, sometimes it varied between 150 and more than 200 on some days.

But the bottom line was you couldn't come back with any packages in your truck. So if it took you eight hours to deliver those packages, great. If it took you 10 hours to deliver those packages, so be it. If it took you 12 hours to deliver those packages, so be it. And the key here was they weren't getting paid overtime. What they were getting paid for was to deliver those packages and don't come back with any in the truck if you did they'd send you back out there until you delivered them so you had to get that done and they're being tracked they've got a what they call a little rabbit it's like a gps device that could monitor

their every move it's like it's so much pressure to finish these parcels like it's it's like there's no option even like to get a break to like go to the washroom likeels. Like, it's like there's no option. Even, like, to get a break, to, like, go to the washroom, like, it's so hard. It's like, because it's like a clock. Like, if you take a little time just to, like, you know, breathe, it's like, nope, your parcels are short. You got to go, go, go. And if they weren't moving fast enough,

they'd get a note saying, you've got to go faster. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years.

I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. So what does that mean? It means you don't have time to have a lunch break. You don't have time just to have a coffee break or, put bluntly, a pee break. So what these guys end up doing, Amazon says it's an urban myth, but they'd be peeing. The drivers would be peeing in bottles because they wouldn't have any

time. So, I mean, these were the pressures that were put on these drivers and it was go, go, go all the time. And you got one warning if you weren't moving fast enough, then you got a second warning if you weren't moving fast enough. And if it came time to the third warning, you would lose your job. Like I was scheduled sometimes seven days, nine days in a row. And the pressure would just get to you. Like you'd go home and you didn't even have time to change clothes. Just fall asleep, then start again next day.

And then the next day and then the next day. It was traumatizing. It was dehumanizing. It was a terrible experience. At this point, as conditions inside the warehouses are getting worse, the pressure on delivery drivers is mounting. Several workers you spoke to about what they decided to do about it. What did they tell you? Yeah, as I mentioned, so there were two drivers, one named TK, one named Arash, worked at two different companies, both contracted by Amazon. I mean, they were saying that in some cases, they'd be working seven straight days. They would not get paid overtime hours. So what

they thought the solution to their problems was a union. They wanted to unionize, they wanted to organize, and they wanted to have some leverage to be able to stand up and say, we need better working conditions here. We need to be paid for overtime hours. We need to have paid breaks. We need to have paid holidays. I mean, some of the basic things that a lot of people in Canada would expect. So in one case, TK, he was the organizer saying, let's vote on a union. Then once word got out, the boss sits him down, the guy who owned the delivery company and says, guys, Amazon doesn't like unions. If you unionize, we risk losing the contract, you risk losing your job. And that was enough of a scare

tactic, as TK was telling me, to convince workers there that they weren't going to go ahead with the union vote. What happens to TK? He gets fired. He then goes and complains to the Ontario Labour Relations Board saying that his performance was perfectly fine. There was no reason for firing him beyond this union issue. His job is reinstated. But what Amazon wouldn't do is give him his card back, which gave him access to the Amazon warehouse so he could pick up the packages in the morning. So all day long, he would just sit in his car waiting, waiting for to try to get access that was denied to him. And he says what they just wanted him to do was go away, quit, stop fighting, stop pushing for a union, and stop being a pain.

Now Arash, over at his company, he sees what's going on there. He says we have to have a union vote, and he gets the support of his workers. 75% of the people in that delivery company vote to unionize. Then they fired me and 14 other of my colleagues. They claimed that we weren't delivering the right amount of packages. And I asked Arash, do you believe that Amazon was behind that? He says 100%. Believes that Amazon was the one calling the shots. Amazon dictates the working conditions and also dictated that there would be no union. There's a case right now, a class action lawsuit that's been filed by these workers saying Amazon was their actual employer. That lawsuit is yet to be certified, but it's been filed. And another complaint before

the Ontario Labour Relations Board. What we've been told clearly in our investigation is that Amazon has an allergy to unions, doesn't like unions. And we've seen that not only in Canada, but in the US as well. I'm wondering if you can talk to me a little bit more about that, that history of Amazon being anti-union. Why are they so firmly against unions? Well, I interviewed the author Brad Stone. He's written two books on Amazon. He's sort of seen as the real Amazon expert. And I asked him that question too. I said, how much of Amazon's ethos really stems from the company founder, Jeff Bezos? And he says, Amazon is like a scaffolding built around Bezos' brain, that everything that happens on the floor of a warehouse to development of new products, everything stems from Bezos. And Bezos, he says, is a libertarian. Bezos is somebody that doesn't

see the value of unions. Bezos actually looked back to like auto manufacturers, some of those employers that have huge workforces like Amazon and looked at the way they work and felt that having an entrenched workforce decreased the possibility of flexibility for a company like Amazon. So he made it clear very early, there would be no unions. He also made it clear by bringing in measures where after three years, if you'd been working there, unless you've got a big job promotion, there'd be no increases in your pay. So what he wanted, Amazon wanted, and still wants to some extent, is high turnover. You don't have a collective workforce, you've got a transient workforce. You know, you see people coming and going all the time. The New York Times looked at this and they said in the U.S., Amazon has a 150% turnover rate. I mean, that's staggering. So what you have is you don't have people there who can get organized.

So even when there was a vote earlier this year for a union, and this was the biggest push for a union at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. An update now on a story we've been following all week long out of Amazon. The vote count is in and Amazon has won enough votes to beat the union effort in Alabama. Huge push there. And they were signing up workers and then they had the vote and they lost badly. The union folks did. They lost by a two to one margin. And when asked later, I mean, there were a lot of reasons, but Amazon led a very aggressive and very expensive anti-union campaign. But that turnover rate comes back to haunt them because even some of the people that had signed up to say, let's have a vote, were no longer there by the time when they had the vote itself. So you've got a lot of people who desperately need the work.

They were told that unions are going to cost you money. They're just taking money out of your pockets. And that was their big line. They're not going to really represent you. They're not going to give you any benefits. Trust us, don't trust a union. And Amazon won its case. And that's been a very, very familiar way of what unions consider to be scare tactics that scare workers because they think, A, it's going to cost them money. B, there will be reprisals from Amazon. C, they could lose their job. And I understand that this past summer, Teamsters, North America's largest union, has now made a commitment to Amazon employees in their effort to unize. Why is this so significant? Well, there is a really big campaign on in Canada led by the Teamsters. There are 16

warehouses or fulfillment centers across Canada. Five more are being built to deal with this massive demand, but 16 warehouses. There are about 25,000 Canadians working for Amazon right now. Amazon wants to hire 15,000 more to deal with this increased consumer demand. So Teamster say it's time for the Canadians to unionize. So they've been going out, they've been fanning out across the country and reaching out to workers.

And how the process works is you need to get, and I'll use Alberta as an example, because two warehouses in Alberta have now had enough people to agree to have a vote. You need to get 40% of enough people to agree to have a vote. You need to get 40% of the workforce to say, we want a vote on unionization. That's happened at the warehouse outside of Calgary and the warehouse outside of Edmonton. That demand for certification goes to the Alberta Labour Relations Board.

Once they certify it and they say that everything was done legally and above board, and if that's the case, then it comes back to the workforce and Amazon will have to have that vote on unionization or not. And already in those warehouses, the campaign has started. Amazon's bringing in workers from supervisors from different parts of the country to tell them why they'd be better off without a union. Amazon's position on this is firm. They said in a statement to us at the Fifth Estate, they say unions aren't in the best interest of workers. So they're putting up signs in the bathrooms or in gathering spaces in the warehouse centers. Here are 10 questions that you should be asking your union representatives or the people who are trying to promote the union, whether you think this is going

to be helpful for you, for your career, and for your take-home pay at the end of the day. These are mandatory meetings that they'll have with workers where they give an anti-union pitch to the workers. So it's an aggressive campaign that really wants to stamp it out because as of yet, there is no unionized facility in North America, none. And Amazon wants to keep it that way. The battle has shifted to Canada, and it will be interesting to see what happens next year. Members of the United Auto Workers walk the picket line, kicking off the nation's largest private sector strike. It is the first time in about 50 years Kellogg's workers have walked off the job. The unions representing Canadian Border Service Agency workers are threatening. This is a strike. This is a job action that is long overdue.

Or we're seeing this wave of uprisings, I mean, not just at Amazon, by workers at companies across North America. What can we learn from the Amazon example as all this labor unrest is unfolding? Well, I think, you know, Amazon itself is learning some valuable lessons. And you're right, there has been more, you know, workers either going out on strike, threatening strike, the sort of labor action we haven't seen in a long time. The labor movement has really been crippled over the last decade. And the pandemic may be a tipping point where things could change for the labor movement in North America. And I think what Amazon is now waking up to that fact that something has changed with its workforce.

They know that they are on the cusp of something, that the union movement may not be able to be stopped, but they're going to throw everything they can. So it's twofold. They're fighting it on one front by trying to spread this anti-union message, and they're fighting it on another front by promising pay increases for the workers if they will keep the unions out. So what happens in the next few months?

They're going to really tell the tale, and all eyes are on Amazon. Because if you can organize at Amazon, I think that a lot of unions will figure out you can organize in a, I think a lot of unions will figure out you can organize in a whole lot other places. Mark, it's been really great to chat with you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Angela. So an update on the situation in Staten Island, New York, where Amazon workers have been pushing hard for a union. A petition to form a union was officially filed today with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board, led by Chris Malls.

That's the former warehouse supervisor we spoke to in this episode. He had collected around 2,000 signatures for the request. It's the first time Amazon workers are trying to unionize in the U.S. since the failed attempt in Alabama last year. Workers there are demanding higher wages, job security, and medical leave. So Amazon says they're skeptical that they had enough signatures to warrant a union election, and if and when that happens is still unclear. That's all for today. I'm Angela Starrett, in for Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. I'll talk to cbc.ca slash podcasts.