On this day, 26 April 2020, workers at the Amazon fulfilment centre in Shakopee, Minnesota, walked out on strike in protest at a colleague being fired for staying home during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Workers claimed that over 50 members of the predominantly Somali workforce participated in the spontaneous work stoppage after the company sacked a worker called Faiza Osman who stayed home in order to protect her two children from the novel coronavirus, despite the fact that Amazon had informed workers they were allowed to stay home. Amazon claimed that fewer than 25 out of 1,000 workers took part.
Strikers were also protesting against Amazon’s decision to terminate its unlimited unpaid leave policy, despite coronavirus cases being reported at over half of its 110 warehouses.
Following the walkout, Osman was reinstated by the company.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9801/amazon-workers-strikehttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=615379773968575&set=a.602588028581083&type=3
“The general sentiment of mankind is, that a man who will not fight for himself, when he has the means of doing so, is not worth being fought for by others, and this sentiment is just. For a man who does not value freedom for himself will never value it for others, nor put himself to any inconvenience to gain it for others. Such a man, the world says, may lie down until he has sense enough to stand up.”
— Frederick Douglass, “The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies (1857)” (via philosophybits)
