Construction Protest at Amazon Distribution Center

September 21, 2020 at 11:30 a.m.

Amazon Distribution Center, 1220 Kennedy Road in Windsor, CT

On Monday, September 21, 2020 at 11:30 a.m., construction workers, contractors, labor leaders and legislators will hold a press conference to protest Amazon’s irresponsible and unsafe labor practices.

In June of this year, the Windsor Town Council approved an $8.8 Million property tax abatement for Amazon to construct a new distribution center called Project Warrior. Sadly, there were no local hiring goals or worker protections mandated for the nearly $9M of free tax-payer dollars Amazon is benefitting from.

We are in the middle of a global pandemic that has cost this state over 4,000 lives and forced over a half a million residents onto unemployment benefits. While the highly contagious COVID-19 virus has a death rate of around 2%, Connecticut has taken great measures to mitigate the effects of the virus and to keep our residents safe. Despite the pandemic, Amazon has netted record profits in the past few months of over $5 Billion. Amazon’s greed, by bringing in hundreds of out-of-state workers from restricted travel states, is putting Connecticut residents in harm’s way. For example, a Georgia steel company named A&D Welding has been on site performing steel erection with 28 workers from restricted travel states.

A&D Welding is just one example of a company working on Amazon’s distribution center that has a history of labor violations. On Tuesday, September 15, 2020, the Connecticut Department of Labor issued a Stop Work Order for the Georgia company’s failure to provide Workmen’s Compensation Insurance for its workers. It is incredibly dangerous to employ construction workers without having enrolled in Workmen’s Compensation, but it is even more shameful to withhold those protections from workers in the middle of a global pandemic. It should come as no surprise that this is not A&D Welding’s first violation. They’ve been issued three Stop Work orders over the past four years for failure to enroll in Connecticut’s Workmen’s Compensation.

We encourage Local 35 members to attend this protest and support Connecticut workers.