Amazon has fired two workers who helped organize the first successful U.S. union at Amazon’s Staten Island JFK8 warehouse. This comes as the National Labor Relations Board on Monday upheld a complaint that Amazon violated labor law in the Staten Island union vote by holding mandatory worker meetings to dissuade employees from voting to unionize. We speak with the fired workers, Tristan “Lion” Dutchin and Mat Cusick, who say they need the support of the NLRB and pro-worker legislation to protect them against retaliation by Amazon.
The reason for my firing was, as mentioned, productivity, not meeting the certain time rate or goal. I was recently terminated May the 7th due to falling behind rates. I fell behind rates in the past, of course, me just being a regular worker working at a regular pace. These people expect you to work really fast, like to speed it up. They expect you to pick items for like 275 an hour at a universal station and 375 an hour at the ARSAW station.
They sent a couple of retrains, you know, people to retrain me, from time and time again. My last retrain was, I think, three weeks ago. After that, that’s when I started to, like, speed it up
— source democracynow.org | May 11, 2022
