- Family Dollar pleads guilty to holding consumer products in ‘rodent-infested warehouse’ Fox Business
- Family Dollar to pay $41M after rat infestation at West Memphis warehouse WREG NewsChannel 3
- Family Dollar and parent company Dollar Tree agree to forfeit $41.5 million over rat infestation at West Memphis distribution center | Arkansas Democrat Gazette Arkansas Online
- Family Dollar to pay $42 million for shipping food from rat-infested warehouse to stores CBS News
- Family Dollar Stores to pay $41.67 million in rodent-infested warehouse settlement CNBC
Tag Archives: Warehouse
Family Dollar pleads guilty to holding consumer products in ‘rodent-infested warehouse’ – Fox Business
- Family Dollar pleads guilty to holding consumer products in ‘rodent-infested warehouse’ Fox Business
- Family Dollar to pay $41M after rat infestation at West Memphis warehouse WREG NewsChannel 3
- Family Dollar and parent company Dollar Tree agree to forfeit $41.5 million over rat infestation at West Memphis distribution center | Arkansas Democrat Gazette Arkansas Online
- Family Dollar Stores to pay $41.67 million in rodent-infested warehouse settlement CNBC
- Family Dollar Stores agrees to pay $41.6M for rodent-infested warehouse in Arkansas ABC News
Harris Co. health officials lift shelter in place after chemical leak contained at warehouse on Colonial Parkway near I-10 in Katy – KTRK-TV
- Harris Co. health officials lift shelter in place after chemical leak contained at warehouse on Colonial Parkway near I-10 in Katy KTRK-TV
- West Harris County, Texas Hazmat situation: Leak at warehouse on Colonial Parkway KHOU 11
- Shelter-in-place order lifted in Harris County, Texas, after anhydrous ammonia leak CNN
- Shelter-in-place order lifted for certain areas of west Harris County after chemical leak detected inside warehouse, officials say KPRC Click2Houston
- Shelter-in-place lifted following chemical leak at west Harris County warehouse KHOU.com
‘Explosive’ product leaking at W. Harris Co. warehouse, officials say; shelter-in-place issued – KHOU.com
- ‘Explosive’ product leaking at W. Harris Co. warehouse, officials say; shelter-in-place issued KHOU.com
- Shelter-in-place issued for certain areas of west Harris County after chemical leak detected inside warehouse, officials say KPRC Click2Houston
- West Harris County, Texas Hazmat situation: Leak at warehouse on Colonial Parkway KHOU 11
- Harris County health officials issue shelter in place after chemical leak at warehouse on Colonial Parkway near I-10 in Katy KTRK-TV
- Katy warehouse leaking explosive chemical, residents ordered to shelter in place, Fire Marshal says Houston Chronicle
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Amazon union victory at New York warehouse upheld by labor board
Amazon workers arrive with paperwork to unionize at the NLRB office in Brooklyn, New York, October 25, 2021.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
A federal labor agency on Wednesday certified an independent union’s landmark victory at Amazon‘s Staten Island warehouse and threw out a litany of objections filed by the e-retailer.
In April, a majority of the roughly 8,300 workers at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, known as JFK8, voted to join the Amazon Labor Union, becoming the company’s first unionized facility in the U.S. Amazon sought to overturn the results of the election, alleging the National Labor Relations Board office that oversaw the election interfered in the union drive. Amazon also claimed that the ALU intimidated workers to vote in their favor.
In a filing Wednesday, Cornele Overstreet, a director of the NLRB’s Phoenix-based office, said he agreed with a federal labor official’s prior ruling that all of Amazon’s objections should be dismissed.
Under U.S. labor law, employers are obligated to begin negotiating in good faith with a union after it wins an election and the results are certified. But the process can be beset with delays, as the employer may seek to avoid signing a first contract and both parties hammer out the details of an agreement. According to an analysis by Bloomberg Law, it takes on average 465 days for collective bargaining agreements to be signed between employers and their newly unionized workers.
Amazon can also contest the ruling to the NLRB’s board in Washington. Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, said in a statement that the company intends to appeal the results.
“As we’ve said since the beginning, we don’t believe this election process was fair, legitimate, or representative of the majority of what our team wants,” Nantel said.
Speaking at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit late last year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said there were “a lot of irregularities” in the union drive, and that the legal process is “far from over.”
“I think that it’s going to work its way through the NLRB,” Jassy said. “It’s probably unlikely the NLRB is going to rule against itself, and that has a real chance to end up in federal court.”
ALU interim President Chris Smalls wrote in a tweet that the union “beat Amazon fair and square,” and called upon Jassy to “come to the table” to sign a contract.
The ALU has struggled to replicate its success after workers voted to join the union at JFK8. Workers at a nearby facility on Staten Island rejected unionization in May, and the ALU lost an election at an Albany warehouse in October.
WATCH: How two friends formed Amazon’s first U.S. union and what’s next
Fire in Brooklyn Today Destroys NYPD Evidence Warehouse in Red Hook – NBC New York
An untold amount of “biological evidence” linked to New York City crimes dating back decades was destroyed or damaged in a raging inferno that devoured an NYPD warehouse off the Brooklyn waterfront Tuesday, authorities say.
The fire, which broke out around 10:40 a.m. at the Erie Basin Auto Pound in Red Hook, a sprawling warehouse on Columbia Street, left a half-dozen first responders and two civilians hurt — and sent up towering black smoke plumes so thick some confused New Yorkers thought the blaze had started in Manhattan.
It escalated to three alarms within about 30 minutes, and roughly 150 fire department members were at the scene through early afternoon.
It wasn’t immediately clear what sparked the blaze, and the investigation could take some time. Firefighters were forced to withdraw from the interior early because of the intense flames and combustible material, as well as the threat of collapse. One section of the warehouse, which may have had hundreds of e-bikes in it, did fall, officials said.
A total of eight people — three firefighters, three EMS members and two civilians — were hurt in the fire, but all are expected to be OK, FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens said.
There was no estimated cost of the damage early. It wasn’t clear how many vehicles were in the lot at the time the fire broke out, but there appeared to be dozens of cars, trucks and motorcycles, along with ATVs, parked on the pier area.
NYPD officials said the vehicles included some historic ones as well as e-bikes, though a full inventory needed to be conducted to determine what was in the warehouse at the time of the fire. Biological evidence from past crimes, including burglaries and shootings — some of it going back 20 or 30 years — was kept at the location, the NYPD said.
Sandy property evidence was there as well. Rape kits, however, were not stored at that facility. Police plan to do a full accounting of the contents to determine if anything can be salvaged, and the extent of the overall damage, but the deep-seated volume of the fire, the building structure and limited access are problematic, officials say.
Chopper 4 was over the multi-alarm fire.
The FDNY appeared to be using boats as part of its firefighting effort during the worst of the fire — and top fire department officials say drones will be used in the coming days to identify any hard-to-see hotspots.
The city’s Office of Emergency Management advised people in the area close their windows to limit smoke exposure. Traffic delays mounted in the area through the morning.
Chopper 4 was over the scene through some of the most ferocious fire, hovering over a row of dirt bikes at one point as a nearby pickup truck burst into fire. The lot appears to be the same one where NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell and Mayor Eric Adams crushed illegal dirt bikes as part of a crackdown this summer.
Erie Basin is one of several lots the NYPD uses to store vehicles that have been seized for reasons other than parking violations. Those might include the arrest of the vehicle owner, investigative purposes or legal reasons, the city says.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) New York branch responded to assist.
Amazon warehouse workers stage Black Friday strikes and protests around world | Amazon
Amazon warehouse workers in the UK and 40 other countries are to strike and stage protests timed to coincide with the Black Friday sales, one of the company’s biggest shopping days of the year.
Employees in dozens of countries, from Japan and Australia to India, the US and across Europe, are demanding better wages and conditions in a campaign called “Make Amazon Pay”.
In the UK, hundreds of members of the GMB union are staging strikes or protests at a number of Amazon warehouses, including a protest outside its fulfilment centre in Coventry.
“We are here today to tell Amazon [that] if you want to keep your empire going, talk to GMB to improve the pay and conditions of workers,” said Amanda Gearing, a senior organiser at the GMB. “Amazon workers are overworked, underpaid and they have had enough.”
Profits at Amazon Services UK, the group’s warehouse and logistics operation, which is thought to employ more than half of the company’s UK workforce of close to 75,000 people, have soared by 60% to £204m, with revenues growing by just over a quarter to more than £6bn last year.
Workers are demanding a wage rise from £10.50 to £15 an hour as the cost of living crisis hits household budgets.
However, participating in the action in the UK could mean that protesters miss out on the second part of a £500 bonus Amazon agreed for tens of thousands of frontline workers.
Last month, Amazon UK said that the award of the second part of the payment was dependent on staff taking no “unauthorised absence” between 22 November and Christmas Eve.
The GMB argued that linking the payment to staff attendance could be viewed as an illegal strike-busting move.
In Dublin, Extinction Rebellion has organised a protest outside Amazon’s offices from 1pm.
A spokesperson for Amazon said: “These groups represent a variety of interests, and while we are not perfect in any area, if you objectively look at what Amazon is doing on these important matters, you’ll see that we do take our role and our impact very seriously.”
“We are inventing and investing significantly in all these areas, playing a significant role in addressing climate change with the climate pledge commitment to be net zero carbon by 2040, continuing to offer competitive wages and great benefits, and inventing new ways to keep our employees safe and healthy in our operations network, to name just a few.”
In London, security guards and CCTV operators at Harrods are also going on strike on Black Friday, including staging a protest outside the luxury Knightsbridge store, the first of 12 days of action through the festive period.
More than 50 staff members are taking part in the protests, which are to be staged across every weekend in December and include Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, over a 7% pay offer they view as a “cut” with inflation running at more than 11%.
Last month, Harrods, which is owned by the Qatar Investment Authority, reported an annual profit of £51m, more than doubled the pay of its managing director to £2.3m and revealed it had collected almost £6m in government support under the Covid furlough scheme.
“Harrods and its owners can absolutely afford to pay these workers a rise that reflects soaring living costs,” said Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the Unite union.
Meanwhile, the industry body UKHospitality said a series of planned rail strikes in the run-up to Christmas would cost UK restaurants, pubs, clubs and bars £1.5bn, and called on the government to bring all partners to the table to try to reach a solution.
Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, said the strikes would go ahead, after a first meeting with transport secretary Mark Harper to try to resolve the dispute on Thursday.
Kate Nicholls, the chief executive of UKHospitality, said the disruption and financial cost of the strikes will cause another lost Christmas on the scale of the impact of the Omicron variant of Covid last year.
“This disruption will devastate hospitality businesses during its busiest period of the year and will once again force the public to cancel and rearrange plans,” she said. “The impact of rail strikes already this year has been devastating and wide-reaching but this will pale in comparison to what we will see as a result of the upcoming strikes in December.”
Amazon suspends 50 warehouse workers after work stoppage in New York
Seth Goldstein, a labor attorney for Amazon Labor Union, called the suspensions of the Staten Island workers “a violation of workers’ rights to join in a collective action about the terms and conditions of their employment.”
“The workers didn’t feel safe going back to work. They were engaging in rights that have been protected for 85 years under the National Labor Relations Act,” Goldstein said.
Amazon confirmed that company managers had suspended workers with pay who engaged in the work stoppage on Monday, as they investigate the events that took place. Company spokesman Paul Flaningan said that while Amazon respects its workers’ rights to protest, it is not appropriate for employees to occupy active work spaces, break rooms or thoroughfares in its warehouses.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
The mass suspension took place less than 10 days before warehouse workers at a separate Amazon warehouse near Albany, New York, are slated to vote to become the second Amazon workforce to join Amazon Labor Union.
That independent union made national headlines in April after securing an unprecedented victory for the labor movement at the Staten Island facility, signaling a new era for labor relations at Amazon, the country’s second largest employer. However, the company has so far refused to recognize the union.
Amazon Labor Union organizers say Amazon’s crackdown in Staten Island was intended to have a broad chilling effect on their organizing campaigns, including the upcoming election.
Union organizers said that 10 union leaders who led the action were suspended on Tuesday, as well as 40 warehouse workers who refused to return to their shifts.
Video recordings of the action shared with The Washington Post show chaos in the warehouse cafeteria, with dozens of workers chanting “send us home” and later confronting management.
Flaningan, the Amazon spokesman, said that all employees were safely evacuated from the area of the warehouse where the fire had broken out, and day shift workers were sent home with pay. He added that once the fire department had certified that the building was safe, the company asked night shift workers to report to their scheduled shifts.
“While the vast majority of employees reported to their workstations, a small group refused to return to work and remained in the building without permission,” he said.
Union leaders dispute Amazon’s description of the event.
“It’s a shame that due to Amazon’s lack of safety protocols, workers had to take a stand, because they were not feeling as though the company took [the fire] as seriously as they should have,” said Christian Smalls, president of Amazon Labor Union. Amazon fired Smalls from the Staten Island facility, after he led a walkout during the height of the covid outbreak in 2020.
Amazon has refused to work with the union in Staten Island. Last month, a National Labor Relations Board hearing officer said it would dismiss Amazon’s objections to the union’s victory, securing a path for warehouse workers to negotiate a contract. The union has yet to be certified.
Meanwhile, the company has responded to the high stakes union campaign in Albany by resorting to familiar tactics from previous union campaigns. They have brought in union avoidance consultants to convince its workforce to vote against unionization, and have disciplined the campaign’s lead organizer.
Amazon hikes pay for warehouse and delivery workers
A worker sorts out parcels in the outbound dock at Amazon fulfillment center in Eastvale, California on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021.
Watchara Phomicinda | MediaNews Group | The Riverside Press-Enterprise via Getty Images
Amazon is raising its hourly wages for its warehouse and delivery workers, the company announced Wednesday.
Beginning in October, Amazon’s average starting pay for front-line employees in the U.S. will be bumped up to more than $19 per hour from $18 per hour, the company said.
Warehouse and delivery workers will earn between $16 and $26 per hour depending on their position, Amazon added. Amazon’s minimum wage for employees in the U.S. remains $15 an hour.
Amazon is spending roughly $1 billion on the pay hikes over the next year as it looks to attract and retain employees in a historically tight labor market. It’s also preparing to enter what’s known as “peak” season, the especially busy shopping period tied to the holidays.
Tensions have been growing between Amazon and its front-line workforce, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. Employees have called for wage increases, more paid time off and adjustments to productivity expectations.
Workers at several Amazon facilities have taken steps to organize, and earlier this year, workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Staten Island, New York, successfully voted to form the company’s first U.S. union. Amazon faces another union election at a site near Albany, New York, next month.
The company said earlier this month it planned to raise pay and benefits for drivers employed by members of its contracted delivery network, which handles a growing share of its last-mile deliveries to customers doorsteps.
Alongside the pay increase, Amazon said it’s also expanding a payday advance program for its employees that allows them to access up to 70% of their eligible earned pay whenever they choose and without fees, not just on a schedule, such as a biweekly basis.
WATCH: Amazon labor union wins — president breaks down future decisions
Employees at Amazon warehouse in Illinois allege racially hostile work environment
Employees at a Joliet, Illinois, Amazon warehouse have filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the company, alleging corporate abuse, racial discrimination, and retaliation.
According to the complaint filed Tuesday, a group of Black employees at the MDW2 Fulfillment Center said that Confederate imagery on coworkers’ clothing, racist death threats written in bathroom stalls, and a lack of security and accountability have contributed to a racially hostile work environment since late 2021. Institutional abuse and women’s rights attorney Tamara Holder said her clients are now not only seeking change in the workplace to appropriately address and resolve these issues, but monetary damages for emotional duress caused by stressful working conditions.
“We don’t know what that amount comes to at this point. But I can tell you that after working in a climate where it’s racially hostile, people are experiencing extreme emotional distress,” she told ABC News. “Our message to Amazon is that their behavior after our cases come to light is only increasing our damages because people are becoming more afraid rather than less.”
Amazon worker Tori Davis listens during a news conference outside an Amazon Go in Chicago. July 27, 2022.
Chicago Tribune via Getty Images
As the case receives more attention, Holder said that employees are hesitant to speak out any more about these claims for fear of further retaliation from the MDW2 Fulfillment Center management, causing concern for the future of this case and her clients’ livelihoods.
“They are allegedly telling their employees that if they speak out, they will be fired because they signed an agreement to remain silent,” Holder told ABC News.
Holder says former MDW2 employee Tori Davis was the first to make contact with her about the warehouse’s work environment. Davis, who was fired earlier this month after raising the alarm about her concerns, told ABC affiliate WLS that the death threats were dismissed by Amazon.
“They were trying to sweep it under the rug,” Davis said. “The way that this situation was handled, it was strange.”
An Amazon Delivery Station and Amazon Fulfillment Center stands in Burbank, Calif., June 24, 2022.
Getty Images, FILE
A spokesperson for Amazon, Richard Rocha, issued a statement to ABC News.
“Amazon works hard to protect our employees from any form of discrimination and to provide an environment where employees feel safe. Hate or racism have no place in our society and are certainly not tolerated by Amazon,” the statement read.
The MDW2 Fulfillment Center did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Holder said she plans to do everything in her power to see the complaint through and ensure that her clients’ voices are heard.
“I think that they had an opportunity here to make it better. And instead they’re taking a very, very different aggressive stance to make it worse,” she said. “They are not too big for me and they are not too big for the people that I represent…We are not going away.”