Warehouse Worker Resource Center

Improving working conditions in the warehouse industry in Southern California

Press Releases

Workers Walk Off the Job at Amazon Air Hub in San Bernardino

by

Contact: media@warehouseworkers.org

In the heart of America’s Supply Chain, Amazon Warehouse Workers are Demanding Higher Pay, Safe Working Conditions

San Bernardino, Calif. — Amazon warehouse workers walked off the job Monday at a warehouse in San Bernardino, the heart of the U.S. supply chain.

Inland Empire Amazon Workers United are demanding an increase in pay, safe working conditions and an end to retaliation. About 900 workers have signed a petition calling for the base pay rate to be raised to $22 an hour. Workers currently start at $17 an hour.

“Amazon could deliver a higher standard for workers, but they don’t,” said Sara Fee, who has worked at the air hub since it opened in March 2021. “A warehouse is just a warehouse. A company is just a company. The people are what makes it all work and we are strong and united to fight for what we deserve.”

In July, 24 days reached 95 degrees or hotter at the San Bernardino airport. After workers confronted managers about dangerous heat conditions, Amazon created an additional rest area to counter heat. Unsafe heat conditions remain in many work areas, and workers are demanding additional protections.

“Working in the heat feels like you are suffocating.. You need to take breaks and you can overheat really easily. They don’t make it easy to take breaks to allow your body to cool down,” said Melissa Ojeda, who has worked at the facility for more than a year. 

The facility, also known as KSBD, is a critical leg in the Amazon logistics network and is the largest air facility on the West Coast and one of only three “air hubs” nationally.

Workers submitted a petition to the management of the air freight facility during Prime Week in July. In part the petition said “We as Amazon Associates work hard to ensure that the building hits the numbers it strives for and work together in order to provide satisfaction to all of our customers. The average rent in California is $1,700 and the average rent in San Bernardino is $1,650. With our current starting pay of $17/hr in a 40 hour work week, we make approximately $2,200 take home pay– meaning that over 75% of our income is going into rent alone….We can barely afford to live in today’s economy.”

“I would like this job to be long term. If workers are heard and there is a change, we can make it a good place to work,” said Daniel Rivera, an associate at the warehouse for over a year. 

The facility opened in March 2021 amidst community concern and opposition around job quality and air pollution. A 2018 study found that even before this facility opened, Amazon’s flights into and out of airports in Riverside and San Bernardino counties released an estimated 620,000 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. The two counties also have the worst ozone pollution in the US, largely due to the warehousing industry.

Amazon promised quality jobs, but has failed to deliver. Since the opening, workers have organized in response to low pay, illness-inducing heat, and brutal working conditions. In addition to a new rest area, workers have also won an increase in pay for night shifts.

The warehouse is located at the former Norton Air Force Base. Amazon currently operates 14 flights a day in and out of the 24-hour facility. Amazon has said its goal is to operate 26 flights a day. The number of workers at the warehouse fluctuates, currently about 1,300 but more than 1,800 in peak season, demonstrating the lack of stability in these Amazon jobs.

The Inland Empire Amazon Workers United is supported by the Warehouse Worker Resource Center and many community-based organizations in the Inland Empire including Inland Congregations United for Change, Inland Empire Labor Council, Sierra Club San Gorgonio and the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice. 

###

About the WWRC

The Warehouse Worker Resource Center is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3), organization founded in 2011 dedicated to improving working conditions in the warehouse industry in Southern California. We focus on education, advocacy and action to change poor working conditions in the largest warehousing hub in the country.

Report: Amazon’s California Injury Rate Jumped 30% in 2021, Despite Company’s Safety Pledge

by

ONTARIO, Calif.  — A disturbing analysis of newly released Amazon injury records shows that injury rates at its facilities increased by a staggering 20 percent from 2020 to 2021.  The report finds Amazon warehouse workers were seriously injured at twice the rate of other warehouse employers at 6.8 per 100 workers, as compared to 3.3 per 100 for all other employers in the warehouse industry. 

Download the PDF report. 

A review of California-specific data shows that injury rates in California increased 30 percent, to a rate that was over 60% higher than the rate of injuries at other warehouse companies in the state.

For years, Amazon’s warehouses and related logistics operations in California have led the nation in the number of serious injuries among warehouse workers. In 2021, the injury crisis for its warehouse workers got even worse. Compared to 2020, Amazon’s California warehouse workers suffered ten injuries for every 100 full-time workers – a 30% increase from the already high rate of 7.7 per 100 full-time workers in 2020. 

“Too many people who work in Amazon facilities get injured. The data shows that this company continues to prioritize speed and profits at a terrible cost to the health and well being of its employees,” said Sheheryar Kaoosji, executive director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center. 

California is a major market for Amazon. In 2021, Amazon had a total of 123 fulfillment centers, sortation centers and delivery stations in California, with a total of 77,664 workers. 

The Injury Machine: How Amazon’s Production System Hurts Workers, published April 12 by the Strategic Organizing Center, examines Amazon’s safety and injury trends across a five-year period, focusing on the most recent employer-reported data from 2021 released earlier this month by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). According to the report, the company’s crushing work pace, punitive surveillance programs and the prevalence of robotics technology only heightens pressure on workers and fuels the nation’s second-largest private employer’s alarming injury rates, despite Amazon executives’ promises to improve safety at its warehouses.

“Amazon’s back-breaking work pace is only getting worse,” said Eric Frumin, Director of Health and Safety at the Strategic Organizing Center. “The very same year that Amazon promised to address worker safety, injury rates shot up 20 percent, facilities with robotic technology became more dangerous — and Amazon spent millions of dollars to mislead the public about the reality in their warehouses. The company’s obsession with speed is crushing tens of thousands of workers each year, and Amazon seems to have no plan to stop.”

Nationally, workers at Amazon facilities suffered nearly 40,000 injuries in 2021, according to SOC’s analysis. While Amazon employed 33% of all U.S. warehouse workers in 2021, the company was responsible for 49% of all injuries in the warehouse industry last year.

Key findings in the California data include:

  • The Redlands, Calif. fulfillment Center (known as ONT9) had the highest year-on-year increase in 2021 of any large Amazon warehouse in the state. After already being the third-worst large warehouse in the state in 2020, the overall injury rate at ONT9 jumped by another 26% in 2021 – a clear indication of the management’s failure to focus on the most urgent safety problems in the state.
  • Workers at 51 of the largest logistics centers in California suffered a total of 5,848 injuries and illnesses in 2021, of which fully 5,119, or nearly 90%, were serious enough to either force the workers to stop working entirely, or require them to switch to another job.
  • At 36 of those 51 sites, so many warehouse workers were injured that the injury rates exceeded Amazon’s already terrible 2021 national average warehouse injury of 7.9 cases/100 workers.

Among these were the massive multi-thousand-employee facilities in San Bernardino (ONT5), Moreno Valley (ONT6), Rialto, Eastvale, Bakersfield, Beaumont and Fresno, which together accounted for over 1700 injuries in 2021.

The SOC report also finds that new robotic technology in 2021 that Amazon claimed “could make work safer for employees” may not have had that impact. Serious injury rates at Amazon’s sortable facilities with robotic technology grew by 20 percent from 2020 to 2021. In 2021, these facilities had a serious injury rate of 7.3 per 100 workers — 28 percent higher than the rate at non-robotic sortable facilities (5.7 per 100). 

###

The Warehouse Worker Resource Center is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) dedicated to improving working conditions in the warehouse industry in Southern California. We focus on education, advocacy and action to change poor working conditions in the largest hub of warehousing in the country.

Los Angeles Worker Center Network Announces New Director

by

The Los Angeles Worker Center Network is proud to announce the hire of its first Network Director, Najeeba Syeed. For the past 5 years LAWCN has worked to, support workers by building power and organizing capacity of worker centers to ensure employers and policymakers implement and improve upon the demands of the communities we organize.

We are excited that Najeeba will be bringing her deep expertise and experience to the network. Our work empowering workers from across Los Angeles will benefit greatly from her leadership. Najeeba looks forward to meeting with partners after her start date of March 1, 2022.

Najeeba joins us after 20 decades as a non profit executive, mediator, professor and government staffer. She has led organizations that offered conflict resolution services and education in communities, courts and schools. After moving to Los Angeles in 2000 upon graduating from law school, she led the Asian Pacific American Dispute Resolution Center and then served as the executive director of the Western Justice Center. The organizations worked to resolve large scale community disputes. She developed programs that addressed workplace conditions, conflicts and employer-employee relations.

In 2010 she joined the faculty of Claremont School of Theology and was a leader in training many of Los Angeles’ progressive faith leaders in the labor and justice movements in our region. During her decade long tenure there, she was instrumental in teaching courses in social justice, faith based organizing, negotiation/mediation and the history of interfaith justice movements. In 2021 she served as a government staffer in city hall.

Najeeba has also mediated many cases involving employee demands regarding wages, working conditions and workers’ labor rights. She has worked closely with groups such as CLUE, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice on campaigns, actions and public education on labor concerns. She has received numerous prestigious awards such as the 2018 Scholar – Activist Award from Auburn Seminary in recognition of her outstanding advocacy on behalf of human rights in Los Angeles.

We are delighted to have her join us as our inaugural director for the LAWCN. “I look forward to serving this network of the leading and cutting edge workers’ rights organizations in Los Angeles. Especially as we consider the importance of workers in this time of a global pandemic, I am excited to develop collaborative programs, policies and actions that build on the incredible work of these workers centers.”

The LA Worker Center Network consists of CLEAN Carwash Campaign, Garment Worker Center (GWC), Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), Los Angeles Black Worker Center (LABWC), Pilipino Workers Center (PWC), Restaurant Opportunities Center of Los Angeles (ROC-LA), UCLA Downtown Labor Center, and Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC).

The WWRC is a proud part of the LA Worker Center Network and is excited to be the fiscal sponsor for this project as it expands and builds power among workers in Los Angeles.

 

U.S. Government Issues Complaint Against Major Warehouse on City of LA Property

by

Trial Will Be Held on Retaliation against Direct and Subcontracted Workers

 

Port of Los Angeles, CA (March 29, 2016) – After a 6-month investigation into allegations that managers at a major warehouse serving retailers including Amazon, Lowe’s and Kmart Sears, routinely violated U.S. labor laws, harming both company employees and those employed on site by a staffing agency, Region 21 of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has found sufficient evidence of law-breaking to issue a Complaint against the company, California Cartage, which operates on property owned by the City of Los Angeles at 2401 E. Pacific Coast Highway.

 

The complaint, which will go to trial as Case 21-CA 160242, finds merit in the allegation that California Cartage managers:

  • Threatened workers with termination if they took collective action;
  • Interrogated workers when they took heat breaks; and
  • Discouraged workers from taking collective action through implicit threats.

 

The workers at this warehouse at the largest port complex in the nation have been demanding basic respect, safety, and fair scheduling at their workplace, and have faced retaliation since the beginning,” said Celene Perez, Co-Director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, which filed the charges and has been supporting the workers’ efforts. The workers first raised concerns in late 2014, when they filed a Class Action lawsuit alleging violations of the City of Los Angeles Living Wage. Since then, they have secured a Cal/OSHA complaint around workplace health and safety hazards that resulted in citations in November 2015, and gone on strike twice to protest the company’s persistent violation of U.S. labor laws under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

 

The complaint was issued against California Cartage management for their actions against workers both directly employed by them and subsidiary Orient Tally, and against workers employed through a staffing agency. “We know that Cal Cartage is in charge of all the conditions in here, and it’s good to see the NLRB is holding them responsible for their treatment of all workers, temp and direct,” said Victor Gonzales, a California Cartage worker who has worked at the warehouse through staffing agency AMR for over five years.

Corporate Giant Cal Cartage Sued for Rampant Violations of Los Angeles’ Living Wage Ordinance

by

Class action lawsuit seeks damages in the millions for more than 500 warehouse workers

(LOS ANGELES – Dec. 18, 2014) On Wednesday, warehouse workers filed a class action lawsuit against California Cartage Company (“Cal Cartage”) and staffing agency SSI Staffing detailing pervasive labor law violations, including the City of Los Angeles Living Wage Ordinance, at the Port of Los Angeles in Wilmington, California, where Cal Cartage leases a mammoth three-warehouse facility from the City of Los Angeles to move products for big box retailers like K-Mart, Toys R Us, Sears and Home Depot.  The warehouse workers are represented by a team of lawyers from Bet Tzedek Legal Services, Bush Gottlieb and Traber & Voorhees.

“Cal Cartage has reaped substantial profits as one of the largest warehouse operators at the Port of Los Angeles.  Rather than meet its obligations to pay workers in its facility a living wage, it instead subcontracted most of the jobs to a staffing company that pays barely more than the minimum wage.  These workers are filing suit to put an end to this exploitation,” says Theresa Traber,  a partner at Traber Voorhees and one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs.

Under the Living Wage Ordinance, Cal Cartage is required to provide more than 500 workers in the warehouse facility with certain wages and benefits because it holds a “proprietary lease” with the City.  The law extends the obligation to SSI Staffing, Cal Cartage’s subcontractor who directly employs more than 80 percent of workers in the warehouse facility.

Julie Gutman Dickinson, a partner at Bush  Gottlieb  and also an attorney for the plaintiffs, adds: “The City has a substantial interest in ensuring that the workers in these crucial warehouse operations at the Port are properly compensated, not only to reduce turnover and increase the quality of services, but also to provide employees with a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work so they have sufficient income to live in Los Angeles.  Cal Cartage is one of the biggest and wealthiest players in the logistics industry today, and it is unconscionable that it fails to ensure workers a living wage at its warehouse operations.”

The lawsuit also alleges other labor violations, including denial of “show up” pay for days when workers were required to report but sent home and for failure to pay for all hours worked.

Carlos Ayala, a forklift driver who has worked in the Cal Cartage warehouse facility since 2010, currently earns $9.50 per hour.  He receives no health benefits and is given four paid days off per year.  Under the Living Wage Ordinance, he should be earning either $12.28 per hour for an all-cash wage or $11.03 per hour plus $1.25 per hour in health benefits, and is entitled to 12 paid days off per year.  “I work hard to make ends meet, but it’s just not possible in Los Angeles without being paid a living wage.  An extra hundred dollars per week would go a long way towards paying the bills or buying groceries,” says Ayala.

The plaintiffs sought assistance from Warehouse Workers Resource Center who in turn connected them with lawyers at Bush Gottlieb, Traber & Voorhees and Bet Tzedek Legal Services.

About Bush Gottlieb

Founded in 1970, the firm Bush Gottlieb is dedicated to the practice of law to advance the cause of working people. The firm’s attorneys appear and advocate regularly throughout the nation before federal, state and local courts, administrative agencies and arbitration panels in their representation of unions, collectively bargained trust funds, and employees, with respect to a broad range of labor relations and employment matters, including wage and hour lawsuits.

About Traber & Voorhees

Traber & Voorhees is one of the most prominent public interest law firms in California, with an established wage-and-hour class action practice.  The firm represents plaintiffs in a variety of complex litigation matters, including cases involving wage-and-hour violations, police and prison guard abuse, employment discrimination and harassment, civil liberties and privacy violations and international human rights violations.

About Bet Tzedek

Founded in 1974, Bet Tzedek pursues equal justice for all by providing high-quality, free legal services to low-income, disabled and elderly people of all racial and religious backgrounds. One of the nation’s premier public interest law firms, Bet Tzedek uses direct legal service, impact litigation, community outreach and legislative advocacy in the areas of consumer rights, employment rights, elder justice/caregiver law, Holocaust reparations, housing, human trafficking, public benefits and real estate to serve more than 20,000 people every year.

CONTACT:  

Theresa Traber, Traber & Voorhees, (626) 585-9611, tmt@tvlegal.com

Julie Gutman Dickinson, Bush Gottlieb, (213) 200-0260,  jgutmandickinson@bushgottlieb.com

Kirsty Burkhart, Bet Tzedek, (323) 549-5802, kburkhart@bettzedek.org

Federal Judge Rules Walmart May Be Liable in Defrauding of Subcontracted Workers

by

Ruling denies walmart’s claims that its contractors acted independently

For Immediate Release: Wednesday, January 13, 2014
Contact: Sheheryar Kaoosji at 213-453-8454

LOS ANGELES – A federal court in Los Angeles ruled Tuesday, January 12 that Walmart and its warehouse operator must face trial to determine whether they are liable as “joint employers” for violating the workplace rights of hundreds of workers who load and unload Walmart’s goods at three Southern California warehouses.

The significant ruling subjects Walmart and Schneider Logistics to liability for all unlawful working conditions in their subcontracted facilities, which would send shockwaves through the retail and warehouse industries.

“Walmart and other major retailers use complicated networks of subcontractors to try to insulate themselves from liability for workplace violations,” said Guadalupe Palma, director of Warehouse Workers United. “The federal court has rejected Walmart’s efforts to pin the blame on its contractors and subcontractors while pretending it had no idea the law was being broken.”

Walmart and Schneider disputed liability on the ground they were not “employers” of the warehouse workers.  They argued that their contracts with two temporary staffing agencies, also defendants in the case, made those agencies solely responsible for illegal working conditions in the warehouse.

This is the first time any court has ruled that a group of workers has presented enough evidence of Walmart’s “joint employer” status to overcome summary judgment or a motion to dismiss, forcing Walmart to defend itself at trial.  If Walmart is found to be a “joint employer,” it will be liable for all of the labor violations the workers have proved.

“The workers’ day-to-day reality is vindicated by this ruling,” said Theresa Traber of Traber & Voorhees, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs.  “They are subjected to the directions and pressures of Schneider managers as they enforce Walmart’s performance standards on a daily basis.”

In denying Walmart’s and Schneider’s for partial summary judgment, Judge Christina A. Snyder focused on the “economic realities” of the workplace and the workers’ critical role in Walmart’s logistical supply chain.  The court cited substantial evidence, obtained through extensive investigation and discovery, showing that Walmart and Schneider controlled the terms and conditions of the work performed by the workers who load and unload trucks coming from the Southern California ports and destined for Walmart distribution centers.

For example, the court noted that that Walmart owns or leases the warehouses and provided all of the equipment; Walmart set strict productivity standards that the workers were required to meet; Walmart controlled the workers’ schedules; and Walmart controlled the rate and method of the workers’ pay by “pressuring [Schneider] to minimize its costs and . . . to pay its subcontractors on a per-container basis.”

“The court got it exactly right,” said Michael Rubin of Altshuler Berzon LLP, co-counsel in the case.  “Walmart controls every detail of its warehouse workers’ jobs and strictly monitors compliance with all its procedures.  The workers function as Walmart employees, and Walmart cannot avoid responsibility by pinning all blame on the underfunded subcontractors it uses to staff its warehouses.”

In October 2011, workers who were jointly employed at the Walmart warehouses by Schneider Logistics, Inc. and two labor services subcontractors, Premier Warehousing Ventures and Impact Logistics, filed the Carrillo class action to recover back pay, penalties, and damages.  Their lawsuit alleges that the workers who load and unload Walmart’s truck containers, many of whom have worked at these warehouses for years, were routinely forced to work off the clock, denied legally required overtime pay, and retaliated against when they tried to assert their legal rights, or even asked how their paychecks had been calculated.

The California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement raided the Walmart-contracted warehouses in October 2011 and issued citations for civil fines totaling more than $1 million for inadequate recordkeeping alone.

About 85,000 workers labor in warehouses in the Inland Empire, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, loading and unloading goods that enter through our nation’s busiest ports in Long Beach and Los Angeles en route to major retailers like Walmart. Many workers are temporary, paid low wages, receive no benefits, and have no job security.

Plaintiff workers are represented by Traber & Voorhees of Pasadena (626) 585-9611, Altshuler Berzon LLP of San Francisco (415) 421-7151, Bet Tzedek Legal Services of Los Angeles (323) 939-0506, and the Law Offices of Sandra C. Munoz of Los Angeles (323) 720-9400.  The case name is Everardo Carrillo v. Schneider Logistics, Inc., No. CV 11-8557 CAS (DTBx) (C.D. Cal.).

 

###

Join Our List Donate