STATEN ISLAND: Rallies At A Second Amazon Warehouse Brings The Grassroots Labor Union, Democrats And Big Trade Unions Together

STATEN ISLAND: Another Amazon warehouse on Staten Island wants its chance at history too.

Coming off a major victory for Amazon Labor Union ALU at the Staten-Island based Amazon warehouse (JFK8’s), another one (LDJ5) wants its shot at history too.

At 526 Gulf Avenue (the location of an Amazon warehouse) on Staten Island, Amazon Labor Union President Christian Smalls, Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) President Sara Nelson, American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein and other members of the ALU’s organizing committee gathered to announce that ALU was successful in garnering the signatures necessary for voting to occur (2,500 people).

Elections at the LDJ5 location of Amazon’s complex began this week.

Looking to follow in JFK8’s footsteps, the workers want to address working conditions that they feel aren’t conducive to getting their job done.

Some of those conditions include “unreasonable” work scheduling that’s based on Amazon’s desire to efficiently distribute products and not the workers’ well-being.

The group at LJD5 also received public support from high-profile elected officials as well such as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“What this whole thing is about is working people standing up,” said Senator Sanders.

In the first dark days of the pandemic, as an Amazon worker named Christian Smalls planned a small, panicked walkout over safety conditions and was fired from his warehouse job - causing him to organize Amazon's first successful labor union.

Mr. Smalls told the union crowd the unionizing was going going national and said, “We got emails from Walmart, we got emails from Target, Dollar General, from Apple, from Starbucks. We are going to take over the country.”