Essential Workers Unite for a May Day Strike. Is It Enough?
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-instacart-target-coronavirus-may-day-strike/
On Friday, front-line workers from Amazon, Instacart, Shipt, Target, and Whole Foods have organized to walk out of their jobs together over demands that their companies provide better pay, benefits, and protections. Some of these workers deliver packages; others deliver groceries. Some stock shelves in warehouses, and others ring up customers in stores. Some of them are classified as independent contractors and others as employees. But all of them claim that the companies they work for have denied them basic protections on the job, even as the pandemic poses greater risks to their health and safety. Despite being classified as essential workers in a crisis, they say, their companies treat them as disposable.
Worker dissatisfaction at these companies has been simmering for years. But the pandemic, which has placed these workers under a spotlight, has raised the temperature significantly. Friday’s strike follows individual walk-outs at Amazon warehouses and Whole Foods stores, as well as protests from delivery workers at Instacart and Shipt. It marks the first time workers from all those companies will strike together as one united force with similar demands.