According to union organizers, Amazon has suspended at least 50 warehouse workers who refused to work their shifts following a trash compactor fire at a facility on Staten Island.
"They were saying ‘we don’t feel safe, we don’t feel safe to work,'" Palmer said.
Amazon spokesperson Paul Flaningan said in a prepared statement that the company had asked all night shift employees to report to their shifts on Monday after the New York Fire Department certified the building as safe."While the vast majority of employees reported to their workstations, a small group refused to return to work and remained in the building without permission," Flaningan said.
The suspended workers were notified by email and phone that their security badges would be inactive during the duration of the probe, Palmer said. The suspensions are in effect indefinitely as the company investigates. The number of suspended workers could rise. Seth Goldstein, an attorney for the union, said the workers intend to file unfair labor practice charges against Amazon with the National Labor Relations Board.
Amazon has filed over two dozen objections with the agency seeking to toss out the union’s April win. Meanwhile, warehouse workers at a separate facility near Albany, New York will be voting in their own union election next week.
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