The Unpaid Times, Inaugural Edition

RDU1 - Garner, NC

"We started the fire, y'all have gotta keep it burning" - RDU1 associate.

RDU1 workers were frustrated with management's handling of recent snowstorms: messed-up timecards & delayed closure announcements. One MyVoice message summed it up:

"The upper management gonna be shocked when we are begging for CAUSE to come back. Half of the amazon facility is fed up with how you guys are putting us at risk driving on the ice. Y'all have proven over and over again these past couple days that profit matters more then our individual lives. You guys have taken forever to make decisions about the weather and then the timecards now this? Once Durham succeeds in their election y'all gonna be scared for Garner to be riding right behind their success."

DRT8 - Durham, NC

Message from DRT8 associate & former union postal worker: Amazon is the biggest corporation in the history of the world. Why do they hate unions?

4AM on the second day of training at DRT8, the 30 of us new hires were blessed with the presence of the warehouse's site leader. He had come to inform us of the evil of unions in general and CAUSE.

The site leader started off his enlightening efforts with a tepid argument that you have the right to participate in a union, but you also have the right not to. Once the "cover our asses so we don't violate labor laws" portion was over he proceeded to the meat of his presentation.

He informed us that Amazon loves its current model where workers can come directly to management without having a union as a middleman. It was hard not to laugh at this but I restrained myself. It's no surprise Amazon likes this model since it works entirely on their behalf. To test it out just go to the site leader and tell him how you deserve a raise and better benefits and you'll see why Amazon likes its methods so much.

As individual workers we are absolutely powerless and that's how Amazon likes it. That means we're easily exploitable and we have to wallow in our grievances or quit. They'll never give you what you need out of pity or because you're just so convincing. If we want our issues addressed we need to be organized collectively as workers and that's exactly what a union is about.

The site leader finished out his presentation with the great benefits Amazon workers receive that may be under threat if CAUSE wins the majority of the workers to join it.

He spent the most time talking about free Amazon Prime. The irony wasn't lost on me that none of us could get that benefit until we'd worked for 60 days; something that wasn't assured since we were all hired as seasonal workers and had absolutely no job security or guarantees we'd be kept on past peak season.

What was funnier was the great benefit we might have missed out on if we had a union was worth $15 a month. All of us were hired on as flex and consequently were given no healthcare or limited healthcare after making it through a period of working there. Amazon can keep its $15. We need job security, good healthcare, retirement, and other benefits that the richest company in the world won't give us out of sympathy or pity.

I came out of this meeting even more sympathetic to CAUSE. As a former postal worker, I did the same type of work I do now, but I was represented by a union. I had guaranteed wage increases and cost of living adjustments every year, great healthcare benefits, a retirement plan, and even stock options.

Beyond that I had job security and wasn't at the mercy of management. The management had to follow the contract and if they didn't, I had the union to fight for me and get my grievances addressed.

I was a union member before and I will continue to be a union member now because I've seen first-hand that the only way workers can get respect is when they band together, organize, and take up fights as one. No employer, especially Amazon, wants their workers to have a say in how things run and what their laborers receive in compensation. They want us to be afraid that standing up for ourselves will only harm us.

But as Frederick Douglass taught us, "power concedes nothing without a demand — it never has and never will." If you want better for yourself it's time to stand up and take it. It's time to get together with our coworkers and get what's ours. This is what a union is and that's what CAUSE is building.

RDU5 - Durham, North Carolina

Friday, Jan 23rd, night shift. Favoritism, hours & breaks. Observation by a RDU5 associate.

I heard that an Amazon manager said that the rationale behind making some of us go home while others got to stay and get our full hours is to be "leaner". The manager explained that instead of keeping everyone for 30 more minutes and then having to give us a break, it's cheaper to keep only a few people for an hour and pay fewer people for a break. Amazon's priorities are clear: the bottom line.

While some people were happy to leave after 3 hours, others felt cheated out of hours they need to make ends meet. Hours were given to certain workers simply based on their assigned department. Fairness? Integrity? Amazon could give a damn. Profit? That's more like it.

It can be easy to be distracted by the free food & happy smiles of the PAs/managers at RDU5. There have been shifts where I walk out of there feeling like, "Hey, this job ain't so bad." But we have to stay focused on the bigger picture. As we piece together each other's stories, we begin to see a larger mosaic of exploitation.

Giving certain workers 4 hours of work while giving the rest 3 hours of work is Amazon choosing profit over people and favoritism over equality. The manager was clear that the work could have been accomplished in 3.5 hours if everyone had been kept on. But Amazon would have had to give us a paid break. Oh, by the way: if you make $18.50 an hour, your break costs Amazon $4.63. But apparently, Amazon's so cheap, they don't want to pay for our $4.63 break.

Think that's bad? In late 2025, Amazon changed its policy so that you have to work 3.5 hours in order to receive a break, when previously you only had to work 3 hours to get a break. Yeah, Amazon pinches pennies like a mf-er. Weird, considering that Amazon saw a significant increase in its sales in 2025.

SNC3 - Durham, NC

Moisturizer Instead of a Holiday Bonus. A handwritten message from a SNC3 associate after the holiday peak.

In lieu of a holiday bonus, the cracked hands at SNC3 were granted a mere paltry recognition for our hard work over peak: a bottle of moisturizer in the bathroom. Each dollop serves as a reminder that Amazon will always choose a remedy over a reward. Their salve of choice this time was a cheap and pre-packaged solution - that will soften the evidence of hard work, setting in to our otherwise empty palms.

National Amazon News

Dec 16, 2025: Amazon workers at DJT6 in Riverside, CA walked out at midnight in protest of unsafe working conditions. DJT6 is now the 5th Amazon facility in California to unionize. They are calling all Amazon workers to unionize.

Dec. 9 - 11, 2025: More than 200 drivers at the DBK1 warehouse in Woodside, NY, rallied with the Teamsters to demand union recognition and better conditions, with the possibility of future strikes if demands aren't met.

In 2023, UPS union workers negotiated a new union contract which: (1) sets starting pay for new hires at $21 per hour, which will reach $23 per hour by 2028, (2) secured part-timers with the same high-quality health, welfare, and pension benefits as full-time employees, (3) guaranteed a minimum of 3.5 hours of work per workday.

This article was first published by Amazon CAUSE.