About 60 Amazon workers stage walkouts over pay, break times

Associated Press (AP) — More than 60 workers across three Amazon delivery stations staged a walkout on Wednesday to demand a $3 raise and a return to 20-minute breaks, according to one of the labor organizers leading the effort.

Ellie Pfeffer, an organizer and warehouse associate at an Amazon delivery station called ZYO1 in Queens, New York, said five people walked out of her station Wednesday in a shift that only has nine workers. She said 28 employees walked out of another station in the borough, called DBK1, and 30 more at the DMD9 station in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.

The protest is being organized by a group of Amazon warehouse workers called Amazonians United, which said in a statement that its demands were first brought up in December through a coordinated petition among six Amazon warehouses in the East Coast. The group claims “rather than responding in good faith in the months since raising the issue, management has attempted to illegally intimidate and remove participants in collective actions from their warehouses.”

Representatives for Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Seattle-based company is the nation’s second-largest private employer behind Walmart.

Amazon’s starting pay is still $15 per hour, but the company said last year its paying new hires an average of $18 an hour. Pfeffer says the base hourly pay at her facility is $15.75 an hour. It’s slightly higher at the facility in Maryland - $15.90, said Linda Gomma, an associate at DMD9.

Workers also want to add 10 minutes to their break per shift. Pfeffer said Amazon offered two paid 20-minute long breaks during the pandemic, but returned back to 15-minute long breaks in October.

“We work really long days, and we work at night,” she said. “Our breaks are really the one time...