WORKERS

Rubie Mosqueda, Time - You might think a corporation worth more than $2 trillion would treat its employees better. At Amazon’s facility in the City of Industry, known as DAX5, we earn $22 per hour and I am not paid for my lunch break. I work four days per week, for 10 hours per day, and do not make enough to cover the cost of living in California. 

The vans we drive are dirty and often unsafe. On top of that, we are constantly monitored by cameras inside our vans searching for the smallest infractions—even during our breaks.

But perhaps worst of all, Amazon has attempted to block my co-workers and I from exercising our rights. They do this at my facility and others like it by hiring drivers through supposedly independent companies, referred to as Delivery Service Partners (DSPs), that deliver packages exclusively for Amazon. By doing that, they claim we are not really their employees and that they do not need to bargain with us if we form a union.

CNN -  A strike that began last week against Starbucks reached nine states on Sunday, according to the union representing the workers. The Starbucks Workers United said baristas in Missouri, New Jersey and New York began their strike Sunday after locations in Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania joined the strike Saturday. Workers walked off the job on Friday in Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle, where Starbucks is headquartered and opened its first location. The union has said the strike could reach “hundreds of stores” by Christmas Eve — although that would only be a small portion of Starbucks’ more than 10,000 company-operated stores.