Workers at Amazon’s San Bernardino air hub say the online retail giant owes them money for not giving them legally required rest breaks for working at least 10 hours in one day.
Calling it a workplace safety issue, also is demanding workers get those breaks in the future. The self-described worker organizing committee on Friday, April 26, said to provide more information on what’s owed to employees.
“My co-workers and I are tired of one of the world’s richest companies violating our basic right to a rest break,” Anna Ortega, an air hub worker and workers united member, said in a news release.
“Together, we’re asking Amazon to tell us how many times they violated this right because we know that, at this point, they owe workers at the building a significant amount of money.”
Amazon representatives did not immediately respond Monday, April 29, to a request for comment.
In phone interviews, Ortega and Cynthia Ayala, another air hub employee and workers united member, said California law requires Amazon, which they said routinely mandates employees work overtime, to give workers a break after 10 hours.
Amazon owes workers an hour of pay every time that break isn’t given, the employees’ group said.
“It was just really astounding” to learn that workers aren’t given those breaks because management “loves to boast safety first and they always have our well being and how we’re a team (and) we work together,” said Ortega, a 24-year-old San Bernardino native who said she works as a sorter in an indoor area of the air hub that gets hot from conveyors running nonstop.
“To have to sit here and listen to them always talk about how safety comes first and safety is paramount, it feels like a slap in the face, it feels like a lie. It doesn’t seem like they really take into consideration the safety of myself and the rest of my co-workers.”
According to workers united’s news release, workers on Friday confronted management with a banner featuring cards signed by more than 500 employees — almost half the air hub’s non-managerial workforce — demanding more information on what they’re owed.
During the two-week period Amazon has to respond to the group, workers will wear buttons with the slogan “Amazon Better Have My Money!,” the release states.
“The beautiful thing that I find about going in a big group to march on your boss is that you feel a sense of protection,” said Ayala, a 27-year-old from Fontana who said she works as a ramp agent loading and unloading aircraft with 7-foot-tall containers weighing thousands of pounds.
“You have people there who know your story, who have heard it themselves because they’re your friends, they may even be your family and you have the sense of protection when you’re going into talking to your boss because it’s not … one versus one.”
In the release, Ayala said: “Seeing an ambulance at our site is not a rarity, and as summer approaches, we will not allow Amazon to put further strain on us by keeping us working without breaks.”
It’s not the first time that workers united, which formed in 2022 and gets support from the Teamsters, has objected to working conditions at the air hub, which opened in 2021.
In July, workers united filed a complaint with California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health or Cal/OSHA alleging inadequate protections from the heat. That led to Cal/OSHA citing Amazon three times in January for endangering workers as temperatures topped 100 degrees last summer.
Workers united also organized a walkout and an unfair labor practices strike at the air hub in 2022.
If workers don’t fight for back pay and the breaks they’re owed, “it’s going to be harder for us to fight (for) things like wages (and) safer working conditions because (Amazon) wanted it to go unnoticed,” Ayala said.
Before Friday, Ortega said she anticipated management would “try and cut us off just because it’s what they’ve done in the past. They also like to tell us that they don’t want to talk to us as a group. They want to talk to us individually.”
“I hope they’re willing to listen to us and willing to negotiate with us.”
