“Don’t be afraid to speak on these victories. The worst person to know 

about it is Amazon, and Amazon already knows about it” - G Paul 

Before COVID, night shift workers at the DEW8 warehouse were not allowed to park on-site. Instead, Amazon leased a parking lot for night shift about 15 minutes away, and required workers to shuttle to their warehouse from that location. 

Then, during the pandemic’s height in summer 2020, Amazon management announced we could now park on-site. They also began offering hazard pay. The company was desperate for workers! 

But their generosity was short-lived. Just a few months later - and well before vaccines were available - the company revoked onsite parking without warning. And, they also revoked hazard pay, essentially giving us all a pay cut just as they were passing out their blue “Hero” shirts to celebrate their workers risking their lives. Many of us were disgusted by Amazon’s callous treatment. We organized a petition to demand restored onsite parking and hazard pay. 

In only a couple of weeks, about 75 of the 100 night shift workers signed the petition. As a group, we took the petition to management. A few weeks later, Amazon announced that night shift could park on site again. 

We also made buttons demanding hazard pay, using Amazon’s “Hero shirt” style. Unfortunately, we could not get Amazon to budge on hazard pay - even though the company was raking in record profits during the pandemic - because we were taking on a company-wide policy, and would have needed to organize at warehouses throughout the system in order to have enough power to win hazard pay back. But the onsite parking win was a strong start to our growing union at DEW8, and in later years we built on this win to keep fighting for our rights. 

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Photo credit: Amazonians United