When Amazon warehouse workers show up for their shifts in the coming days, they might pass massive balloon displays celebrating Juneteenth, receive free food, observe flag-raising ceremonies, or see flyers for events like “dress-up week,” which encourages people to wear the colors of the Pan-African flag to receive company merchandise.
What they won’t get: a day off to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States.
As a growing number of private companies, including Target and Nike, are offering Juneteenth as a paid holiday, Amazon has opted to give its fulfillment center employees giveaways instead—a decision some workers and union activists are calling deeply insulting.
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Courtenay Brown, an Amazon Fresh employee in Avenel, New Jersey, told The Daily Beast that Juneteenth should be a paid holiday not only because people of color make up a majority of the warehouse workforce, but also because those workers are routinely discriminated against and burned out from arduous 12-hour shifts.
“You can’t say that you support your Black and brown workers when all of your actions show the opposite,” Brown said. “You’re making your profit off the backs of Black and brown workers. We need a little bit of dignity. A little bit of consideration.”
From Brown’s perspective, the multi-billion-dollar corporation “preys” on Black neighborhoods, including where she lives in Newark, to staff its enormous, windowless warehouses. She said that while en route to work during the pandemic, she’d see billboards and hear radio ads for jobs at the company. “A lot of people I live near, my neighbors, people I see, they work there,” she said. “There’s people who recognize me and say, ‘Oh yeah, don’t you work on the dock?’”
At JFK8 on Staten Island—a warehouse that made history this year by voting to join the grassroots Amazon Labor Union (ALU)—employees are being encouraged to dress in red, green, and black to commemorate the holiday and receive “swag bucks.” In fulfillment center lingo, swag bucks are akin to rewards points that workers can accumulate in exchange for Amazon-branded gear like T-shirts, hoodies, lanyards, and water bottles.
Amazon didn’t comment when asked why the company didn’t include Juneteenth as a paid holiday this year and whether it will in the future.
But spokesperson Brad Glasser told The Daily Beast that the e-commerce giant is hosting a variety of Juneteenth events at its warehouses, including JFK8, run by worker volunteers.
“Amazon is marking Juneteenth again this year with opportunities for employees to come together to celebrate a pivotal moment in Black history in the U.S., learn more about the significance of Juneteenth and the Black experience, and participate in virtual and in-person events with colleagues and partners,” Glasser said. “Employee volunteers at individual sites are empowered to develop additional programming that reflects the community and their facility. We are proud to support the hard work from employees across the company who want to help their colleagues learn and celebrate.”
Glasser said employee volunteers at JFK8 were behind the “dress up week” and that similar activities have been organized around Pride month and Independence Day. JFK8 will have a flag-raising ceremony, create a pop-up Juneteenth museum, and post employee testimonials about why the federal holiday is important to them, Glasser added.
Still, for some employees and union organizers, the Juneteenth warehouse tributes pale in comparison to having paid time off.
Last month, Bloomberg reported that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was prepared to issue a complaint against Amazon for allegedly retaliating against an employee who rallied for a paid Juneteenth holiday. The federal agency also accused Amazon of telling employees during mandatory, anti-union “captive audience meetings” that their pay could be cut to minimum wage if they joined the ALU.
According to the report, the NLRB determined that Amazon unfairly banned a worker from commenting on the company’s “Voice of the Associate” message boards—where employees can offer suggestions and express concerns—after the worker created a post urging the company to provide Juneteenth as a paid holiday.
“I’ve been calling this out for weeks,” said Chris Smalls, the president and founder of ALU, which is currently battling Amazon’s attempts to overturn its union election in a days-long hearing with the NLRB in Phoenix. (Smalls was fired from JFK8 in 2020 after leading an employee walkout over working conditions during COVID.)
“Last year, they made the excuse that the president made the decision to make it a federal holiday too close to call for them,” Smalls added. “But this year, once again, they’re trying to ignore it and they’re not really recognizing it as a paid holiday, they’re not representing the Black community well, and I just have to continue to call that out.”
Smalls said he considers the “dress-up week,” which appears to be a promotion exclusive to JFK8, “disrespectful.” He continued, “Oh, let’s play dress-up on Juneteenth to really amplify the ending of slavery? That’s ridiculous.”
Angelika Maldonado, a pro-union employee at JFK8, told The Daily Beast, “Amazon’s trying to make us feel like we’re involved, make us feel like we are respected, but we don’t even get paid for the holiday. This is not a small mom-and-pop shop who maybe can’t afford to pay us for this one day. This is a billion-dollar company. They can definitely afford to do this.”
Maldonado believes that Amazon’s fight against the ALU, which is pushing for better pay and hours, shows that “the swag bucks and dress-up day is more important than a paycheck that would benefit a family at the end of the day.”
“If we were a certified union, this [Juneteenth] would have been one of the first things we would have pushed for,” Maldonado said of the ALU, which is now focused on upholding the victory it secured in April.
Meanwhile, some employees were also questioning why they’ve received Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday but not Juneteenth.
“Most of our coworkers are people that are Black,” Maldonado said. “It’s pretty disrespectful, because I remember even around MLK Day they had MLK on our TV screens and MLK literature all over the building. But one thing he fought for was labor rights, and that’s the same thing co-workers want.”
This isn’t the first time Amazon workers demanded the company recognize Juneteenth as a paid holiday. In 2020, the company was under fire after a Chicago delivery station offered employees chicken and waffles for the emancipation observance, a move some staffers called “racist.”
“We stand in solidarity honoring the Black community by supporting local Black businesses,” a sign at the facility stated. “We are happy to share an authentic meal crafted by Chicago’s Chicken + Waffles June 19.”
“So much for supporting your Black/African American employees,” one worker fumed in a private employee Facebook group, according to CNBC. “Where’s the Solidarity in that? We demand a paid holiday, not some damn chicken.”
In response, Amazon said the facility’s diverse staff including the site leader, who is Black, approved the restaurant and poster for the free food.
“The leader who put on this event had good intentions to honor Juneteenth by supporting a local small business owned by a member of the Black community,” a company spokesperson told CNBC. “After receiving some feedback from team members at the site, they’ve since decided to remove the sign in question.”
