Amazon has lifted its own ban and will now allow warehouse employees to keep their cell phones with them while they work. This decision came after months of criticism aimed at the e-commerce giant.
Amazon Now Allows Employees to Carry Cell Phone
Amazon released a statement about the decision and said that they recognize the desire for employees to keep their mobile phones with them inside facilities, and the last two years have demonstrated that they can safely do so.
The statement also reads that Amazon is making the temporary phone policy permanent worldwide in all of its operations facilities.
According to Motherboard, in December 2021, an Amazon warehouse in Illinois collapsed after it was hit by a tornado.
The impact killed six people, and it triggered fear amongst workers that mobile phones would once again be banned in warehouses.
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The warehouse workers said that this decision would cut them off from important safety and weather warnings and communicating with family members.
Amazon's ban on warehouse employees' mobile phones was paused during the pandemic, but the e-commerce company expressed intention to have it reinstated in 2022, according to Mashable.
A petition with 380 signatures created by the Amazon workers movement group called Amazonians United back in December 2021 was circulated to six warehouses. The group said that the phone ban is not about their safety. It is about their control.
Amazon workers have long campaigned for better working conditions and pay, job security, and employee rights, including cell phone access, with significant movement within the past few months.
Warehouse workers in Staten Island made history by forming the first Amazon union within a company that has historically been anti-union.
The workers rallied to unionize in early April, with a second Staten Island warehouse set to vote on whether or not to unionize.
Amazon Workers Filed for Union Vote
Aside from the workers in Staten Island, the Amazon workers in Canada also filed for a union vote.
According to Reuters, Teamsters Canada has brought back a union drive for employees in an Amazon center in south Edmonton. The momentum was built by the first successful organizing effort in New York.
A trade union of more than a million members in the United States and Canada, The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, has made organizing Amazon its top priority, according to Bernie Haggerty, an agent with the Teamsters Local Union 362.
This marks Teamsters 362's second attempt at forming a union at the Nisku warehouse after failing to secure a 40% base for a union vote in 2021.
An application to unionize must first demonstrate that at least 40% of employees support it, according to provincial regulations. The workers are only authorized to vote for or against unionization once the labor board has granted an application.
Unfortunately, Teamsters 362 never made it to that point. Haggerty, who is also one of the lead organizers of the campaign in Nisku, said that this is the perfect time to try unionizing again.
Haggerty added that what happened in New York is a motivation for them, and they want to strike as fast as they can now.
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Written by Sophie Webster
