Tech Won't Save Us - The Amazon Union Drive Comes to Canada w/ Sara Mojtehedzadeh

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

Paris Marx is joined by Sara Mojtehedzadeh to discuss the Teamsters’ organizing at Amazon warehouses in Canada and the working conditions that workers face at those facilities.Sara Mojtehedzadeh is a labour reporter at the Toronto Star and the host of Hustled, a podcast about Foodora workers’ fight for a union. Follow Sara on Twitter at @SaraMojtehedz.🚨 T-shirts are now available!Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.Also mentioned in this episode:If you’ve ever assigned an episode of the podcast in a college or university course, let me know by Twitter DM, email, or through this form.In June, the Teamsters voted to put resources behind unionizing Amazon.The Teamsters Canada applied for a union vote in Edmonton, Alberta, and said it’s organizing at nine warehouses. Amazon is hiring 15,000 workers and raising wages.During the pandemic, the Canadian government signed a deal with Amazon to deliver PPE. The contract fell apart.After an Amazon worker died in Indiana, the governor intervened to overturn the citations.California is regulating productivity quotas at warehouses.Discussions are picking up about sectoral bargaining in Canada.Sara wrote about the high injury rates at Amazon’s Canadian warehouses and the temporary closure of its Brampton, Ontario warehouse after a Covid outbreak.Find out more about Teamsters Canada’s Amazon campaign and the Warehouse Workers Centre.Support the show

folks would be ready to be sent to hospital and Amazon would make comments in their injury claims such as pain is subjective. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Sarah Mojtahedzadeh. Sarah is a labor reporter at the Toronto Star and the host of Hustle, a podcast series about the fight by foodora workers in Ontario to be able to unionize. I'll include a link to where you can find it in the show notes. Obviously, throughout this year, we've been talking about unionization at Amazon, organizing by workers at this absolutely massive company. And earlier this year, workers in Bessemer, Alabama tried to unionize and lost that vote, though it's still being challenged before the National Labor Relations Board in the United States. But then in June, we saw that the Teamsters made a commitment to unionize Amazon. And the Teamsters already has members in delivery, in warehousing, and in other areas that Amazon is also involved in. So it has kind of an incentive to want to unionize these workers so that Amazon doesn't drive down wages and working conditions in the sector that would

eventually filter out to the unionized warehouses as well because they would be uncompetitive. And so last week we saw in Canada the Teamsters filed for a union vote in Edmonton, Alberta, and later announced that they were organizing at other warehouses across the country. And so I figured this was the perfect opportunity to have Sarah on the show to talk about the news of this union drive in Canada, this attempt to unionize Amazon warehouses in Canada, but also her other reporting on what Amazon has been up to during the pandemic and the very high injury rates at these warehouses in Canada. Sarah and I had a great conversation and we also touched on how Canada is actually kind of a laggard when it comes to technology policy and, you know, protecting workers as new technologies have been used against them to, you know, make work more precarious, to reclassify them as contractors instead of employees.

All of these issues that, you know, we talk about frequently on this podcast and that, you know, if you're interested in these issues, I'm sure you've heard about many times. But Canada is certainly not a leader in this area and is more of a follower that looks to other jurisdictions to try these things first. And, you know, so far hasn't even really adopted many of those policy changes, I guess you could say. So I hope you like this kind of step out of the United States, look at what's going on in Canada, but also whether Canada might be kind of the future or the next stage of this kind of drive to unionize Amazon warehouses in North America. Before we get into this week's episode, I also want to make a request. I've heard from some listeners in the past who are like university and college professors that they have assigned episodes of

the podcast for their students to listen to in courses. And so if you have done that before, if you could let me know either by sending me a DM on Twitter, sending me an email, or I have a form in the show notes that you can find a link to. So if you just let me know through any of those methods, that would be much appreciated. I'm just trying to collect that information. Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, a group of left-wing podcasts that are made in Canada, and you can find out more about that at harbingermedianetwork.com. If you like the show, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and you can share it on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it.

Every episode of Tech Won't Save Us is provided free for everybody, because listeners who can support the show choose to do so. So if you like the podcast, if you feel like you learned from it, you can join supporters like Johnny Gaynor in Philadelphia, or Thomas from Brest by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and becoming a supporter. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Sarah, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to have you on the show. You know, obviously, I've been following your essential work on, you know, labor organizing in Canada, and in particular, in, you know, Canada's tech sector, in particular, gig work and Amazon, these companies and issues that are

becoming ever more relevant, you know, with every passing year. And so there was a particular, you know, news story that I'm sure a lot of people saw last week that I think is incredibly relevant for our listeners, but also for, you know, the future for a lot of workers in Canada and beyond. And so in June, the Teamsters voted to put resources behind a campaign to unionize Amazon in the United States and Canada. And last week in September 2021, the Teamsters Canadian affiliate filed for a union election at an Amazon warehouse south of Edmonton, Alberta.

And later in the week announced they were organizing at nine sites across Canada. And just for context, that's more than half of the 15 or so warehouses currently in operation in Canada. So what was your reaction to this news? And what is the significance of it to the broader campaign to unionize Amazon? Honestly, I was quite surprised. I knew that Teamsters had made Amazon a focus of their organizing efforts, but I didn't think that they would announce quite so soon that they were ready for a union vote.

You know, particularly at this facility in Edmonton, you know, obviously Alberta's laws around organizing are some of the most hostile in Canada. So it's a bold move from Teamsters and a bold announcement, but it'll be really interesting to see how things unfold there. Absolutely. And as you were saying there, you know, in a number of the stories that I read about,

you know, these announcements from Teamsters, it noted that labor laws in Canada are more favorable, I guess, to unions and to workers than in the United States, but also that the laws in Alberta are some of the worst in Canada. So could you talk a bit about labor laws in Canada, what that will mean for unions as they seek to organize at Amazon and unionize Amazon, and how they differ in relation to the United States, but also, I guess, across the country, where it does differ by province? Yeah, I mean, it's a complicated question because obviously it's a patchwork of different laws and I'm by no means an expert on all the different jurisdictions in the US. But here in Canada, it does vary province to province, but very few, if any, I believe provinces have what we call card check certification, which is essentially where you get a certain number of folks who sign a union card, you pass, unions have pushed in most provinces to introduce or reinstate

that kind of legislation because it does make it easier to unionize. But currently, the process in Alberta, as it is in many other provinces, is essentially you have to get enough workers to sign cards so that you can go to the labor board and say, you know, we have 40% of people who are interested in joining a union. But then there's this process that then kicks off where the labor board has to essentially investigate the application to certify. And then if everything is in order, then they order a secret ballot vote at the workplace. And there's no timeline around this. It could take weeks, could take months. And so for critics, what that allows the employer to do is have quite a long runway to intimidate, to coerce, to pressure workers not to ultimately vote in favor of the union. And the longer they have

to do that, you know, the more likely to be successful they are. And the experts that I spoke to for my piece on this noted that in Alberta, the penalties for employers crossing the line in terms of, you know, coercing workers tend to be very small. So it's easy for businesses to kind of just treat those costs like the cost of doing business. Absolutely. And just to provide some context to listeners who might be outside of Canada, you know, Alberta is a province that had straight, you know, conservative governments for 44 years. And that was only interrupted recently with a brief period of New Democratic, which is like a centre-left party. And now the Conservatives are back in power there.

So, you know, it will be interesting to see in particular how this plays out in Alberta. But the Teamsters also announced that they were organising at other sites across the country in Ontario, British Columbia. Is there any indication yet of what that might look like outside of Alberta as well? Or is it still too early to say? I think it's too early to say. And I think that Teamsters will want to play its cards pretty closely to its chest because I'm sure that Amazon is now sort of hyper aware of potential organizing within its warehouses.

But I think, you know, for warehouses across Canada, that might be close to applying to certify, you know, Teamsters will want to be quite guarded with that information. But you know, the timing is quite interesting as well, because the day before Teamsters announced the Alberta Union application, Amazon announced that it was raising its starting wages. Sort of buried in that was the fact that they're actually eliminating a bonus program as well. So, you know, whether it will result in significant changes to workers' wages is definitely questionable. But this announcement about a union vote was certainly preceded by what on the surface was, you know, a good news story from Amazon. And it's quite a similar

playbook to what happened in the US a few years ago, where in 2018, Amazon announced that it was introducing a $15 minimum wage policy, which a lot of folks read as a sort of effort to stave off unionization. But at the same time, they canceled the bonus program that existed. Yeah, I also caught that interesting, I guess, placement of the stories, right? On Monday, the big announcement that Amazon is hiring 15,000 new workers and raising wages in Canada. And then the following day, you know, that the Teamsters filed for a union vote in Alberta. And you have to imagine that Amazon knew that something like this was coming, even though, you know, Amazon has gained, I'm sure, a lot of new customers and customers who spend a lot more at Amazon during the pandemic,

and they are opening new warehouses. So it's not a surprise that they would be hiring new workers. But it seems like the particular placement of the story and the way it was framed does come as a response to or to try to preempt, you know, the story about the union vote being applied for in Alberta. Yeah. And I think it's not just the union vote. It's how I think in many ways, fairly or unfairly, Amazon warehouses have sort of become a byword during this pandemic for the kinds of working conditions that put people at risk. Now, I've reported quite extensively on what happened within Amazon warehouses. And we know that there were massive COVID outbreaks here at the Toronto area

facilities, which, you know, Toronto is sort of the epicenter for Amazon's warehouse network. So, you know, we know that there were huge outbreaks. We know that there are longstanding problems around injuries and other concerns from workers. To me, it's a systemic problem. It's not just about, you know, Amazon being the worst employer in this sector. The reality is that this sector,

warehousing is incredibly precarious. It's incredibly fast-paced. It's low wage. It relies largely on racialized workers. And I think Amazon did become a byword because of the very highly publicized outbreaks, but also because they're politically so powerful. You know, obviously one of the most successful and well-known companies in the world profits, you know, went up by 200% or something over the past year.

And so I think that they became this target for sort of public anger in a way that other businesses didn't. And I think that these wage increases are, you know, the timing could potentially be connected to that sort of public relations issue or problem that they're also trying to confront. I would also note, you know, for listeners who haven't been paying much attention, whether they're in Canada or not, that during the pandemic, there was also an agreement between Amazon and the federal government to help to transport pandemic supplies early on. And I believe a few months later, it was cancelled because Amazon couldn't provide the services

that the federal government actually needed. So it was interesting to see how that kind of played out. And, you know, there was criticism at the time of whether or not the government should have used Canada Post or something else. But it still is interesting to see, you know, you're talking about the power of this company and how much it's grown over the past year or two years, I guess we're getting close to now with the pandemic. And so, you know, as we pay attention to it or see what kind of impacts it's having, it also has these important connections to government that it can take advantage of because of, you know, the influence that it has in the economy, you know, how much it's been growing and things like that.

Well, absolutely. And I think, you know, one of the most, to me, stark examples of the power and influence that Amazon wields was, you know, here in Toronto, there was a massive outbreak at an Amazon facility in Brampton. Ultimately, I think over 650 workers tested positive. And the public health unit in the region ordered the partial closure of the facility because, you know, the outbreak was so large scale. And it ultimately came to light that the provincial government made an approach to the local health unit to say, you know, allow Amazon to jump the line in terms of accessing vaccines and give vaccines specifically to that warehouse to get it back up and running, which the health officer

declined, declined the offer because of concerns over the sort of ethics of accepting, you know, vaccines for a specific business at a specific location that was mid-outbreak. But it just goes to show the influence and the position of power that Amazon occupies. Now, whether or not they asked the government to do that, I don't know what the inner workings of how the request came to be. But the fact that the provincial government made the ask regardless is, you know, quite a stark example of the way that Amazon can kind of suck the oxygen out of the room and really occupy a position of privilege and power in terms of decision making. Yeah, I think is a great example. It reminds me of, you know, how they influenced the

United States Postal Service in the United States to put, you know, the box in front of the warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama during the union vote that has, you know, been very contested. And that is ultimately, I think, the primary reason why the result of that election now is being challenged. And there was also a story, I think, a couple of years ago, and I think it's related to something that we'll be talking about a little bit later, but about how an Amazon worker was, I believe, killed on the job somewhere in the south of the United States. And there was influence, not necessarily that Amazon was involved, but that, you know, within the government, there was pressure on operational health and safety to ensure that Amazon wasn't particularly penalized for something

like that. So it is really shocking to see the power that the company can wield, not just in the United States, but, you know, as you're saying in Canada as well. Before we get to some of the reasons why workers may be looking to organize and to unionize. I wanted to ask you about another group that is also involved in working with Amazon workers. You know, we've talked about Teamsters Canada, but in some of your reporting, you've also talked to workers from Warehouse Workers Centre. So can you talk a little bit about Teamsters Canada and Warehouse Workers Centre and, you know, I guess how those two groups differ? The Warehouse Workers Centre is a sort of more community based, I would say, kind of sector wide initiative. They set themselves up a couple of years ago with the support backing of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, who have run some really interesting organizing drives. They backed the Foodora couriers who were the first gig workers in Canada to come close to

unionizing. Unfortunately, Foodora left the country, but they sort of won this historic labor board decision granting them the right to unionize. And so, yeah, Cup W has backed these sort of like interesting, challenging, organizing initiatives. And the Warehouse Workers Center is sort of an extension of that in a way. I think, you know, it's a center for workers across the sector based in Brampton, which is kind of, again, the epicenter of these kinds of jobs. And it's a way of, I think, bringing workers together, mobilizing, and just generally providing support for, you know, workers in a sector that is very low wage, that has very low union density, only 8% of warehousing. Workplaces in the Toronto area are unionized currently. So I think it's a really interesting and kind of community-based way to like make

inroads in these types of workplaces. And again, sort of recognizing that a lot of these workers are often newcomers to Canada, may not speak English as a first language, and that there are a number of barriers to, you know, being treated equitably on the job and in the job market that workers require support for. And I think that was sort of the aim of setting up the center. So, I mean, I think when you look at the Teamsters approach, it's been a much more sort of cut and dry, like get the union card signed type initiative, from what I can tell. Whereas, again, I think the Warehouse Workers Center is more of a community-based effort. You know I think it's really interesting because there are lots of differing opinions about what

will make for a successful union drive and I think certainly looking at the lessons learned so far in the US you know there are concerns that just picking one facility and attempting to unionize it sort of not in concert with other warehouses is really difficult because we know we saw in Bessemer the tactics that Amazon uses in order to discourage workers from showing support to union. And, you know, another issue that some have raised is that, you know, at the end of the day, if one facility unionizes, but the rest remain non-union, I mean, they can just shift production to a different site, right? So they always have that capacity. And it's a really, it's a big hurdle for unions to overcome. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see like what strategies ultimately are the most successful. Yeah, just picking up on that point briefly, you know, I read your interviews with labour leaders that you published, I believe it was recently. And one of them talked about, you know,

sectoral bargaining, right? And the need to ensure that there is kind of that floor across the sector instead of just, as you say, organizing one warehouse and another warehouse. Is that kind of part of the discussion there? And is this kind of what unions in Canada are thinking about moving forward? You know, when we talk about sectors like the gig economy or like warehousing? And is there any kind of prospects of moving in that direction? Like, I guess, would it need a change in labor law to do something like that? Yeah, I mean, it's a tough one. When you look at the Foodora campaign that I mentioned earlier, that was backed by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, you know, initially,

that was just focused on one gig employer, Foodora, because that's sort of the way that our labor laws structure organizing, it is workplace by workplace. And it's been really interesting to watch the campaign more from a focus on food aura to becoming gig workers united, which is representing a sector really of workers rather than just one workplace. I think there's been some longstanding divisions in the labor movement here around like what is best there, there are definitely unions that are resistant to the idea of sectoral bargaining. Because I think, you know, for a long time, workplace by workplace is how it's done. And that has been the dominant model in North America. But I think that there is an increasing recognition, certainly within some unions,

like Unifor, for example, which is our biggest private sector union, that, you know, if we really want to tackle precarious working conditions, we have to be negotiating at the sectoral level like they do in many European countries. Because the reality is that you can't lift the floor for everyone at this point by organizing an odd warehouse here or there, or a grocery store here or there. It still leaves so many workers in low wage and precarious positions. And there's so many challenges to organizing workplace by workplace. And warehousing is a great example of this because it's a sector that relies heavily on temp agency workers, for example. So how do you organize a workplace that is essentially a revolving door of employees that companies can

turf for no reason whatsoever? They have no essentially legal obligations to these workers and at any whiff of sort of union sentiment, they're, you know, they're out the door. So I do think that the conversation about how to best organize and how to most effectively organize does need to shift. Yeah, and I think that's a great perspective to have. And I recall that it was kind of in the discussions, I guess, again, recently, especially when New Zealand passed some new labour legislation that dealt with sectoral bargaining. And I saw, you know, the Center for Future Work and some other organizations discussing it a bit more than so I'm sure that's a conversation that will continue into the future. But I did want to discuss some of your further, you know,

reporting on Amazon, because I think it helps to illustrate some of the reasons why these Amazon workers are dealing with some big issues at their workplaces that will naturally, beyond just generally maybe wanting a union anyway and having some collective power to push back on their employer and demand better conditions, but to actually look at the specific issues that some of these workers are having in their workplaces. So I want to touch on a few specific ones. And I want to start with the reporting that you did in December 2020 on injury rates at Amazon warehouses in Canada, using data that you obtained from Reveal. And just a quick note for listeners that if you want to know a little bit more about the US side of that, you can go back to episode 36 in November 2020, where I spoke to Will Evans, the investigative journalist who broke the

US side of that story. But the data for Canada is just as shocking, if not more so, showing an injury rate of 9.1 per 100 employees compared to 7.7 in the United States. And that injury rates in the Toronto area warehouses had doubled since 2016. So can you tell us a bit more about the work that you did on that story and why injuries are so high at Amazon's warehouses in Canada? The story sort of predated the pandemic in many ways because, you know, I'd been interested in what was happening at Amazon's Canadian facilities. And so I'd filed a bunch of freedom of information requests to our workers' compensation board here in Ontario.

And what I wanted to know was, you know, what are the injuries exactly and how are they happening? And sort of in the midst of that, as I was waiting for the records to come back, you know, the pandemic hit. I had numerous workers in Amazon warehouses reaching out to me about pandemic related health and safety concerns. But in the midst of that, I happened to get in touch with the folks at Reveal and just on a sort of on a whim said, you know, I'm interested in reporting on Amazon. And they said, well, you know, we actually have data for Canadian warehouses, which I hadn't expected at all. And I certainly hadn't expected that the injury rates were higher than the American averages that they'd calculated using, you know, what was essentially Amazon's own data on occupational illnesses and injuries. And again, you know, what it allowed us to do is paint a picture over time of sort of Amazon's own accounting of its injuries and illnesses. And it was really valuable because

the only data that we have access to here is Amazon's workers' compensation records. And what my freedom of information requests ended up showing was that, you know, we really need to think carefully when looking at public injury rates here in Canada as reported through the Workers' Compensation Board, because what we see are the injury claims that are accepted by the board. And, you know, they calculate an injury rate based on the accepted number of claims. But what I found out by getting access to the actual records themselves was that Amazon was aggressively disputing injuries and illnesses that workers were filing to the extent where, you know, folks would be ready to be sent to hospital and Amazon would make comments in their injury claims such as pain is subjective. You know, really seeking to challenge or dispute

the severity of workers' injuries, which ultimately means that if you are successful at the compensation board in disputing those claims, that your public-facing injury record ends up being better. And there's a financial incentive for workplaces to do that. It's not illegal. It's a matter of trying to manage your injury rates, and therefore the amount of workers' compensation premiums you pay. So, yeah, really what we were able to look at was the nature of the injuries and also Amazon's response to them and how they dealt with them. Yeah, you know, your reporting found that almost 80% of serious injury claims filed between early 2018 and 2019 in Ontario were disputed by Amazon. And so, you know, that's really significant when

you think about, you know, as you're saying, the injury rates that are being told to the public from, you know, these worker compensation claims and how that can hide the real rate of injury that is actually happening at these warehouses if a significant degree of those claims are able to be kind of reduced or overturned, I guess, by the company by challenging them. And so what does this mean for workers? But what does it also mean for Amazon itself if it's able to successfully challenge these claims? Because another piece that you wrote about was how when these workers went to the kind of on-site medical facilities, you know, they were given advice that kind of

didn't address the severity of the injuries that they were receiving. Yeah. So as far as the impact on workers, when a company disputes the severity of your injury and says, you know, this injury, you don't need time off for it. You know, it's not so severe that you need to go home and take time off. What it ultimately means for workers is that, first of all, you may not get access to the rest rehabilitation and health benefits that you need in order to recover. And what it can also mean is that workers get placed on what they sort of call them phantom jobs. So it's where your employer says, you know, you're not severely injured enough to go home, we'll give you a modified job here at the warehouse or wherever it is that will suit your current physical state if you've been injured. But what a lot of Amazon workers told me was that the accommodations they were given were sort of like either, you know, these phantom jobs where

they're just like handing out chips at a lunch or something or, you know, kind of doing sort of made up tasks, or they are accommodations that they're physically not able to do. You know, the job is still so physically demanding that they're not able to do it. And so those were the concerns that workers raised with me about, you know, the sort of tactics of disputing the severity of injuries. And again, you know, I think that can really lead to some long-term physical impacts if you're not, you know, you're not getting the rest and rehabilitation that you do need. And in terms of why do companies do this, whether it's Amazon or any other company, you know, again, it's about ensuring that injuries are not recorded as being, we call them lost time

injuries, but essentially it means serious enough that you have to miss work because that's what impacts how much money you pay in premiums to the workers' compensation board. So there's a financial incentive, again, there to minimize the severity of injuries. And, you know, workers would tell stories of going to AmCare, which is Amazon's sort of in-house care team and being told, you know, that they're fine or to take a painkiller. You know, obviously Amazon sort of denies that the care provided is insufficient. But, you know, I interviewed a number of workers who expressed some pretty grave concerns over the nature of care that they received after being injured. Yeah, you know, obviously what you're describing there is seriously concerning, right? Because as you're saying, it's these workers who are doing this work, doing this essential

work, you know, especially as we have recognized during the pandemic when so many people were reliant on Amazon for, you know, deliveries to their home and things like that. And when they're being injured, they're potentially not getting the help and the healthcare that they need in order to properly heal. And then there's the other question, I guess, of whether Amazon is taking the necessary measures to avoid those injuries in the first place. Because, you know, one of the big issues is kind of the speed and the productivity targets that Amazon places on workers that push them to their limits and that cause them to cut corners and things like that, that increases the risk of injuries. And, you know, as the figures show, you know, the injury rates at those warehouses are really high.

So can you talk a little bit about that aspect of it? So what we found in our reporting is that two thirds of the injuries at Amazon's Ontario warehouses were due to repetitive motion and overexertion. You know, these are injuries that by their very nature can be difficult to detect, but by the time you do detect them, you know, there could be serious long-term damage there. And reading through the actual injury reports, you know, it was reports of there was one worker who reported having twisted in a repetitive motion so often that they had cracked a rib. You know, workers reporting having Christmas trees falling on them. These injuries that really speak to the physically demanding nature of the job,

that again, in some ways, they're easier for Amazon to dispute. I mean, one of the common refrains from Amazon in response to these injury reports was that, you know, the mechanism of injury is unclear. But because they are repetitive motion injuries, you literally can't point to a single accident that led to the injury. It's the nature of the work itself that's, you know, causing the strain on the body. And, you know, what all of the workers I spoke to said was that that was very much related to the productivity targets that workers were expected and are expected to hit and the possibility of disciplinary action for the sort of slowest performers. Now, obviously, in the early days of the pandemic, Amazon suspended some of those disciplinary policies, but they not long after reinstated them. And, you know, here in Ontario and in Canada, we don't have any legislated protections

for speed of work. And I think it's really interesting to see what's happening in California in terms of the California state legislature exploring a bill to essentially demand more accountability from companies who set productivity quotas and ensuring that the rates that are set by employers don't interfere with sort of basic rights like, you know, taking breaks, lunch breaks, bathroom breaks, etc. You know, all problems that Amazon workers have raised. Yeah, you know, you bring up California and I feel like so often, whether we're thinking about gig work or this kind of warehouse work, we're referring back to California and things that are happening down there. It makes me a bit disappointed that we can't, you know, point to Canada, like leading the charge on protecting these workers. And instead,

we need to look to other countries and say, like, hopefully, we can emulate this sort of a policy, you know, in the future, which I think is a bit disappointing. Yeah, and I think it's interesting, you know, I've done a little bit of reporting from California, just because they are often sort of leading the charge on these issues around good work, you know, warehouse work, precarious work, etc. And, you know, almost inevitably when I go down there, folks are surprised that Canada is actually behind. You know, we're not setting the pace in terms of improving protections. We're generally following the lead of places like California. We've typically been much slower on the uptake in terms of taking action on pieces

of legislation that would address the realities of precarious work today. I mean, I think, you know, obviously, we have some buffers, I think, you know, like universal health care, a workers' compensation system that I think is in better shape than many U.S. states. But in terms of worker protections that really tackle precarious work, we're very much, I think, behind the pack, really, when it comes to implementing those protections. Yeah, and obviously, it's not the topic of our interview today. But there don't seem to be the prospects, at least in the near future of addressing those things. Unfortunately, you know, in Ontario, it looks like we're probably not going to be heading in that direction. But you know, we need to wait and see. So we can't talk for sure about that yet. But your story on the Amazon injuries also kind of intersects with the pandemic, right? Because you said that, you know, at the time that you reported, the pandemic was already

happening, even though you had started before the pandemic, right? And so in the story, you talk about how, you know, as Amazon was telling people to stay home, if they had flu-like symptoms, they were also offering incentives for them not to miss work, including a weekly draw for $1,000 for workers with perfect attendance. And you know, if you think about the type of workers who are working these jobs, usually it's people who the money that they're making really matters, right? And the opportunity for a bit more would really matter as well. And so that might influence their decision to, you know, still go to work, even if they are feeling a bit sick, if the supports are not

there for them to stay off. So can you talk a little bit about Amazon's response to the pandemic, and whether it was taking the measures that were actually necessary to keep its workers safe in Canada? I think there's a few sort of layers to answering that. The first is that I think in the early days of the pandemic, you know, my early reporting was really around the concern that Amazon was not taking appropriate steps. And, you know, workers sent me photos of some pretty robust safety measures, you know, around what health authorities were advising as safety precautions. Now, whether what health authorities were advising were the correct set of guidance is another question and, you know, probably not appropriate for this podcast. But I think that Amazon did take the public health guidance seriously after that kind of initial rocky start. Certainly compared

to other employers that were just like blatantly not following the rules, you know, I think Amazon certainly did a better job from what I understand. But I think when we're talking about COVID risk, you know, we're talking about more than was there hand sanitizer, were there masks, you know, of course, these are important safety checkboxes. But we're actually talking about the dynamics of the workplace. We're talking about how much power do workers have to say, no, you know, I'm not going to come to work today if I feel sick. In the case of Amazon, you know, their permanent employees do have a limited number of paid sick days, but they're accrued over time. So if you're sort of early on in the year, you know, you might

not have an adequate number of paid sick days accrued to actually take one when you need one. And then of course, they get four paid days. So if you are having COVID symptoms, you might run out of paid sick days pretty quickly. And temporary employees do not have paid sick days. So when we look at, you know, how many employees at Amazon are permanent versus seasonal, You know, one warehouse that I reported on around December of last year was about a third temporary employees. So a third of the workforce who didn't have access to paid six days. Now, Amazon was offering once workers, you know, were told by health authorities to self-isolate, that period was paid. But it's about the incentives,

as you said, to come into work or not come into work. And when you layer on top of that, you know, wages that are not adequate to live above the poverty line with the possible lack of paid sick days and an incentive, you know, a bonus to come into work and not miss a day because you have the sniffles, you know, it shouldn't be surprising that people do go in with symptoms. And then I think you also have to factor in, you know, the location of these facilities. They are largely based in low-income racialized communities. And again, it's about the power dynamics that that sets up. You know, it's not enough to say on paper, we encourage you to not come in if you're sick. It's about

whether workers fear there will be long term reprisal if they choose to not come in. It's whether workers when they're on the job, you know, feel they're able to take a bathroom break and wash their hands or change their mask. And, you know, I think companies like Amazon can say all the right things. But without addressing the fundamental power dynamics of their workplace, I think you will see lapses simply because workers do not feel empowered to access even the rights that they have on paper. Yeah, essential point. And I would also point back to my interview with Kim Kelly, where we discussed how Amazon in the United States as well has this kind of history or,

you know, tends to locate its warehouses in these really kind of poor areas that are dependent on these jobs, right? And that have even less leverage than your average worker, I guess, to push back or to demand better because they need this work, right? And so I think that's a really essential point that you're bringing up there. Earlier, you also talked about how the warehouse in Brampton was actually closed by health authorities because of an outbreak of over 650 cases within the warehouse. Can you talk a little bit about what happened in that instance? Yeah, so it was actually quite difficult initially to get any sort of sense of what was happening within Amazon's warehouses because public health authorities were not naming, in many cases, employers that had significant outbreaks. But through a freedom of information request, I ultimately learned that,

first of all, during the first year of the pandemic, two Amazon warehouses accounted for the first and second largest outbreaks in the entire region. And not long after that, we learned that this particular warehouse in Brampton would have to be partially closed because of an outbreak that had sort of been, you know, there'd been a bunch of cases prior to the start of 2021, but it had suddenly escalated and a large number of workers were testing positive. You know, again, I think it's hard to say what exactly happened to accelerate transmission to that extent. I think part of it was, you know, obviously the rise of variants. Again, I think that Amazon did implement a number of safety precautions that were in line with what public health recommended. But, you know, I think we really need to ask generally whether workplaces like warehouses, manufacturing, etc.,

were being given the correct advice because, you know, a lot of these employers where we did see massive outbreaks, they're employers where the ventilation is such that it could put workers at additional risk. And I'm not sure that that was adequately addressed in the public health guidance. So, you know, these employers that saw massive outbreaks, some of them, you know, were totally compliant with what the advice around droplet contact precautions were, but they may not have been adequate for a workplace like a warehouse where, you know, often ventilation is a problem. And, you know, for many reasons, they can't increase the fresh air exchange in

there. And so, you know, it's tough to say what led precisely to this outbreak. But I think these are all factors that we need to think about when we think about workplace outbreaks. And then again, you know, it comes down to me really to the power dynamics of not just the particular workplace, but the particular community, as you said, where these workplaces are based. You know, in the case of Brampton, we again are talking about a community that is largely racialized folks. It's a low income community. It's communities where people have no choice but to take transit, where probably households are multi-generational and where, you know, everyone who can work is an essential worker and does not have the option to stay at home. And so you had, you know, risk factor upon risk factor upon risk factor. And, you know, I think ultimately in Brampton, whether it be Amazon or any of the other

employers, many of them warehouses that saw massive outbreaks, you know, it created this incredibly tragic and really disheartening and saddening outcome. Yeah, I really appreciate you kind of breaking that down for us and outlining the potential issues that come from that and how, you know, while we saw these big outbreaks at Amazon, it's also really not just Amazon. And the point that you've been making through the interview as well, you know, while we have these issues with Amazon, there's also a broader issue of the type of work here as well that needs to be addressed. And so I wanted to end our conversation with a final question. You know, we've been talking about your reporting on Amazon. As you know, you've also mentioned, you've done great reporting on gig economy organizing in

Canada as well. And you know, I'll recommend that listeners go listen to your Hustled podcast as well that you hosted, which is a fantastic look at the Foodora campaign. But, you know, in recent years, we've been hearing a lot about labor organizing, particularly in the tech sector in the United States. But it seems like there has been comparatively less attention on that in Canada. Do you think that there is less organizing going on in Canada? Or do you think it just doesn't get the same degree of attention as we tend to see south of the border? I think it might be both. I think that, you know, I really respect how vibrant the labor reporting and tech reporting scene is in the US. And I think, you know, podcasts like this, that does both Canada and the US, but also the sort of,

I think, host of reporters who bring a really critical lens to these topics. It's super vibrant in the U.S. and I think that's part of the reason why, you know, it's kind of a positive feedback cycle in a way, you know, I think when workers see others mobilizing in some ways that can encourage or mobilize folks to mobilize themselves. You know, I think that generally speaking, the labor movement here in Canada has some work to do in terms of figuring out how they are going to confront the way that work is changing and what the best organizing strategies are. You know, I think there's less reporting on it here, and therefore it doesn't have the same visibility as it does in the U.S. for sure.

But that being said, you know, there are really interesting efforts happening here in Canada. I again would point to, you know, Fedora as an example of that. And like I said earlier, I think in some ways, there are buffers to the levels of inequality that we see here in Canada, that don't exist in the US. And that is not to excuse the inequalities and inequities that we see here in Canada. It's just to say that I think sometimes pushing people out of complacency here in Canada, it takes a bit more of a push. You know, I think there is an unfortunately complacent attitude in some sectors of Canadian society that have not reckoned with, first of all, the way Canada is, but also the trajectory that it's on, that people see the impact of racism and inequality in the US

and like to think that, you know, that's not us, but it is. And I think we just haven't fully reckoned with that at the sort of highest policy levels in Canada. I don't think the message has been received. And, you know, I think that more needs to be done to ensure that that message is received within the labor movement as well, and that that informs the way that organizing happens here in Canada. So yeah, I mean, I think it's an interesting juncture in both places. And I think it will probably get more interesting as time goes on. Absolutely. I completely agree. You know, with everything you just said there, I think we can get away a bit too easily with just saying that, oh, you know, we're not as

bad as the United States. And so everything is all great and perfect up here in Canada, which is not at all the truth, not at all. And I would say that, you know, there is not enough labor reporting happening here in Canada, but your work is really essential to helping to move that forward. I really enjoy it. And I'm sure that any of the listeners who are based in Canada who want to keep up on these issues should really be following your work as well. Sarah, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today.

Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Sarah Mushtahedzadeh is a labor reporter at the Toronto Star and the host of Hustled. You can follow Sarah on Twitter at Sarah Mushtahedz. You can follow me at at Paris Marks and you can follow the show at at Tech Won't Save Us. Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, and you can find out more about that at harbingermedianetwork.com. And if you like the show, you can support the work that goes into making it by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and becoming a supporter. Thanks for listening. Thank you.