MSN Government safety regulators are suing Amazon, looking to hold the world's biggest online retailer accountable for ridding its site of unsafe merchandise sold by third parties. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission voted 3-to-1 to approve the administrative complaint filed against Amazon on Wednesday. It seeks to force the online behemoth to stop selling potentially hazardous items, to work with CPSC staff on recalls and to directly notify and offer refunds to those who purchased them. Amazon, for example, sold more than 24,600 faulty carbon monoxide detectors that failed to activate when the gas was present, and nearly 400,000 hair dryers without mandated devices to protect against shock and electrocution, the CPSC said.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 13, 2021 CONTACT: Chelsea Connor | [email protected] | 347-866-6259 (NEW YORK, NY) – Today, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) announced its endorsement of New Jersey Governor, Phil Murphy in his bid for a second term. The RWDSU represents approximately 10,000 workers in the retail, warehousing, healthcare, manufacturing and public sectors in New Jersey.  “The RWDSU is proud to endorse Governor Phil Murphy for re-election. His quick and responsive leadership throughout the COVID-19 pandemic provided critical guidance to keep our frontline members safe early in the health crisis. His robust legislative agenda during this first term, which included an expanded Paid Family Leave and Paid Sick Leave, also meant that our members had a means to continue providing for their families while caring for themselves or their family members while recovering from COVID-19. Yet, our unqualified support for Governor Murphy runs deeper than the pandemic. He gets working people and he gets the needs of our members who work in retail, healthcare, manufacturing and warehousing throughout the state of New Jersey – he raised the state’s minimum wage as a first order of business; he signed long-needed legislation to create safer staffing levels in nursing homes; and he supports stronger labor standards that create good paying union jobs in industries like warehousing and distribution centers. For these reasons and more, we stand with Governor Phil Murphy,” said Stuart Appelbaum, President of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “Over the past year, the working women and men of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union have kept New Jersey moving forward and displayed unflinching resilience in the face of a challenge like no other,” said Governor Murphy. “As our economy continues to bounce back from the pandemic, New Jersey will remain a leader in lifting up organized labor and ensuring working families receive the wages, benefits, and dignity they deserve. I'm incredibly grateful to have earned the RWDSU's endorsement for reelection.” # # # The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) represents 100,000 members throughout the United States. The RWDSU is affiliated with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). For more information, please visit our website at www.rwdsu.org, Facebook:/RWDSU.UFCW Twitter:@RWDSU.

by Stuart Appelbaum Amsterdam News  In June, as COVID infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths in New York hit new lows and vaccination rates rose above 70%, what had appeared to be a light at the end of the tunnel blossomed into a sunny summer day. Nearly all remaining restrictions on businesses and social gatherings were eliminated, and sights we hadn’t seen since early last year––crowded restaurants, full bars, and sold-out full-capacity concerts and sporting events at arenas––once again became commonplace in New York. As the pandemic hopefully continues to recede, the debt and gratitude we owe to our essential, frontline workers should not. These workers – among them, thousands of RWDSU heroes––stepped up to provide essential services for all of us when we were locked down during the worst public health crisis in our country in a century. These working men and women were thrust into a battle they did not choose, but it’s a responsibility they courageously accepted. These essential workers in food processing, health care, pharmacies, supermarkets and retail stores and more were there for us throughout this crisis––often at great personal cost to themselves and their families. For a brief while, as the pandemic raged, our society and employers recognized the sacrifices essential workers were making. An emphasis was placed on making workplaces safer, with proper PPE provided, and workplaces being kept clean and sanitized to an unprecedented degree. And many employers agreed to “hero pay” for their workers; additional hourly pay that recognized workers’ contributions. As infection rates continue to drop and vaccination rates continue to rise, it’s important to not lose sight of how important these essential workers are to our economy, our society, and our families. The way we view these workers needs to permanently change for the better, and so does their treatment. Essential workers deserve the higher pay and appreciation many of them received last year, and they deserve greater emphasis on the health and safety of their workplaces. At the RWDSU, we’ve always recognized the importance of these workers, and fought for greater pay and benefits and safer workplaces to protect them. During the pandemic, we’ve been a leading voice for hero pay as well as proper protection for workers so that they can do their jobs safely and go home to their loved ones. In our latest contracts for retail workers at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s in New York, covering thousands of working men and women, language was included not only to protect workers and consumers from COVID-19, but also any future pandemics we may have to fight through. The lessons we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic will not be forgotten. It’s no exaggeration to say that RWDSU members––and all essential workers––earned the title of “heroes” during the COVID-19 pandemic. We owe it to all of them to continue to fight for safer workplaces, better pay, and better benefits for the essential work they do not only during times of crisis, but every single day. Stuart Appelbaum is president, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Twitter: @sappelbaum; www.rwdsu.info

The Guardian  We were initially anxious about the introduction of robots into our workforce because of the potential disappearance of manual labor jobs. Robots would take over factories, we were told, they’d drive our cars and trucks, and they would do all of the cleaning that janitorial and domestic workers are currently hired to do. But it turns out auto-pilots drive cars about as well as my cat when he’s drunk, and the way my friend’s Roomba always gets lost under the kitchen table, spinning uselessly, unable to find his way out, suggests we’ll still need people with brooms for a while now. Instead, the robots are here not to replace this lower tier of underpaid and undervalued work. They are here to smugly sit in the middle, monitoring and surveilling us, hiring and firing us. Amazon has recently replaced its middle management and human resources workers with artificial intelligence to determine when a worker has outlived their usefulness and needs to be let go. There is no human to appeal to, no negotiating with a bot. This is the most boring possible Terminator sequel, where the robots aren’t here to murder or enslave you but rather to text you snidely that you won’t need to come into work tomorrow or, for that matter, ever again. According to a report by Bloomberg, Flex drivers, who are Amazon contract workers and not granted the protections reserved for full-time employees, are being hired and fired via an app. A software program monitors each worker to determine whether they are working quickly enough, whether they are driving safely enough, and whether they are efficiently meeting their delivery quotas. That this program is rife with errors and punishes workers for things that are not their fault, from traffic problems to incorrect delivery directions, does not seem to concern Amazon. Workers have often complained about the unfair monitoring and lack of human oversight, but Amazon has maintained its system. This system works for Amazon because the US maintains a large population of insecure and underpaid workers. (And by insecure, I don’t mean the same insecurity that drives our billionaires to compensate for a sadness deep down inside with extravagant wealth. I mean a lack of stability in finances and housing.) Bezos and others like him seem to think there is an endless supply of people available to be churned through their system and spat out when convenient. And, until recently, they were not wrong.

Huffington Post Several cities in the Northwest experienced record-breaking temperatures this week, causing dangerous working conditions for people trying to do their jobs during the sweltering heat wave. Lifeguards in Portland, Oregon, got sick from the heat, airline crews in Seattle needed rest breaks in “cool down” vans and Amazon workers in a Washington warehouse said temperatures reached 90 degrees indoors. Restaurant employees in at least three states walked off the job over hot conditions. The blazing sun and stifling heat don’t just irritate and exhaust people trying to do their jobs –- it can also be fatal. Excessive heat has been the leading weather-related killer in America for 30 years. Heat stress killed 815 U.S. workers and seriously injured more than 70,000 from 1992 through 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Just this past Saturday, a farmworker in Oregon died while moving irrigation equipment on a day when temperatures reached 104 degrees. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency tasked with protecting workers’ health, gives workers the right to refuse dangerous work if there’s a clear risk of death or serious physical harm. But if their employer fires them for it, workers have to win a retaliation case under the agency’s laws to be reinstated or win back wages. When it comes to heat, experts say those laws are behind the curve. Since 1972, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has issued multiple reports recommending standards for occupational heat exposure. These recommendations include basic requirements such as employers having to produce a plan for gradually acclimating workers to the heat and giving workers access to water and rest breaks in a shaded or air-conditioned area. OSHA, however, has not followed these recommendations and adopted a specific heat standard. Instead, when deciding whether to issue citations for safety violations, the agency relies on a general duty clause that states employers must provide workplaces “free from recognized hazards.”

Local 108 members in Secaucus, New Jersey, ratified a new three-year contract with their employer, Mutual Trading Warehouse. The facility provides Japanese food and restaurant supplies for Japanese restaurants.  The new contract provides annual hourly wage increases as well as a $500 “appreciation bonus” for members, and also contains a provision which will place wage increases on top of any state or federal minimum wage increases. The contract also provides for the establishment of a member health and safety committee, a $1 per hour pay increase for certification on fork lifts and other equipment, and covers 100 percent of cost increases in medical coverage.

Reuters The Biden administration also recently pushed to boost the budget of a Labor Department unit that investigates whether gig workers are misclassified. Biden’s nominee to run that division has supported government crackdowns on the workforce models of gig-economy companies like Uber. Biden’s American Jobs Plan legislation also helps to “fund the NLRB’s participation in a multi-year, multi-agency effort to combat misclassification of employees as independent contractors,” according to a budget document filed by the NLRB to Congress. Ohr did not offer more details on what that effort would entail. Ohr did not comment on a high-profile case involving Amazon.com Inc, which is before the NLRB. The Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union is trying to persuade the labor board to throw out the results of a union election it lost in Alabama in early April by proving Amazon violated U.S. labor law. There are ongoing legal challenges to Biden firing Robb and picking Ohr to lead the agency. The Department of Justice has recently filed a motion to intervene and argue on the legitimacy of Ohr’s appointment.

Yahoo! Finance Adam Obernauer, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Director of the Retail Organizing Project joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel with the latest on Amazon unionization efforts. Of course, on the flip side of this coin is the actual workers who are working to make these orders possible to make Prime Day possible. As many of us look forward to the event, worth focusing in a bit more on the worker issues tied to Amazon and now Prime Day, as orders pick up, given the fact that it has been a few weeks since that failed union vote in Bessemer, Alabama. A lot of things still not solved when it comes to the issues workers raised around Amazon's employment. And for more on that, I want to bring on Adam Obernauer, Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union Director of the Retail Organizing Project. And Adam, I mean, your guys' union have been at the forefront of kind of this union battle around the issues at Amazon. Talk to me about maybe how much has still gone unsolved or maybe if any of the efforts in kind of added efforts on Amazon's side to kind of bring attention to these issues, has anything changed?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 17, 2020  Contact: Chelsea Connor | [email protected] | 347-866-6259 (NEW YORK, NY) – Ahead of Amazon’s Prime Day event, Stuart Appelbaum, President of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) issued the following statement:  “Even as many shoppers may look forward to Amazon’s Prime Day each summer, Amazon’s workers have good reason to dread it. “Amazon has been called out all over the world for its unacceptable health and safety record and its working conditions for its employees. And Prime Day only makes everything much worse for these workers. “During Prime Day, workers across the world are forced to work mandatory overtime, oftentimes in extreme temperature conditions, and at an often unattainable pace that results in injuries. “Amazon needs to start paying attention to the health and safety needs of its employees. It needs to reduce the unbearable pace of work which has resulted in countless documented physical and mental injuries – a pace of work that is only exacerbated by Prime Day.  “Amazon continues to fail to understand that its human employees are people and not robots.  “Critically, Amazon needs to start listening to the concerns of its workers, instead of trying to crush their efforts to have a collective voice about their own health and safety through a union. Amazon must stop its virulent union busting and allow its workers to organize, without employer interference, so that they can address worker protections not just for Prime Day, but every day.   “Amazon needs to start addressing its workers’ needs and ensuring its workers are safe every day, and especially during Prime Day events.” # # # The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) represents 100,000 members throughout the United States. The RWDSU is affiliated with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). For more information, please visit our website at www.rwdsu.org, Facebook:/RWDSU.UFCW Twitter:@RWDSU.

CNET A random security check put Jennifer Bates over the edge in Bessemer, Alabama, the warehouse worker told The New York Times. After she learned she wouldn't get a longer rest period for the screening she underwent while trying to leave the warehouse on a break, she joined an effort to unionize the warehouse. The union election failed. The result of the election, which the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is seeking to have thrown out, means Amazon employees are left to argue with their managers about policies or take Amazon to court over them. The National Labor Relations Board found Amazon has retaliated against employees who organize strikes and walkouts, which are also options. During oral arguments for the Busk case, Chief Justice John Roberts asked why employees can't take their complaints over security screenings to the bargaining table. Maybe they could ask for a higher wage if they aren't going to be compensated for the screenings, he said. There is no bargaining table, replied Mark Thierman, the workers' attorney. "These are all non-union employees."