Amazon Powers ICE. Its Workers Aren't Happy
2 hours ago
- #Labor Organizing
- #Surveillance Capitalism
- #Amazon Workers Union
- Matt Multari is an Amazon delivery driver and worker-organizer who sees his role as historically significant beyond just delivering packages, connecting it to his Assyrian heritage and generational struggle.
- Amazon workers face intense surveillance and performance metrics through apps and scorecards, which Multari describes as an attempt to erase worker identity and make them replaceable through data collection for algorithms.
- Multari and his coworkers at the DBK-1 warehouse in Queens unionized with the Teamsters, gaining some concessions like pay during winter storms and new equipment, but Amazon refuses to bargain with the union.
- Amazon's profitable AWS cloud services have contracts with U.S. government agencies like ICE and surveillance companies like Palantir, linking Amazon's tech operations to immigration enforcement and surveillance systems.
- Tech workers, including former Google engineer Zelda Montes, are organizing with groups like No Tech for Apartheid to oppose Amazon and Google contracts with governments, emphasizing unity between tech and warehouse workers against surveillance and labor abuses.
- With many Amazon warehouse workers being immigrants, organizers like Sultana Hossain criticize Amazon's contracts with agencies targeting immigrants, arguing that worker abuse funds these activities, and workers vow to continue fighting for respect.