“They Don’t Think Our Lives Matter as Much as Theirs”
On Monday night, workers at a Chicago Amazon warehouse joined a nationwide wave of walkouts over what they say is management’s inadequate response to the coronavirus pandemic. One of the action’s organizers spoke to Jacobin about it.

Former injured Amazon employees join labor organizers and community activists to demonstrate and hold a press conference outside of an Amazon Go store on December 10, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois.Scott Olson / Getty
On Monday, workers at JFK8, an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, walked off the job over the company’s allegedly inadequate response to cases of coronavirus among the warehouse workers. “How many confirmed cases? Ten!” they chanted outside the facility.
That evening, workers at another Amazon warehouse, DCH1 in Chicago, walked out. According to DCH1 worker Terry Miller — a pseudonym we have granted them for the sake of being able to speak freely — the majority of night-shift workers stayed off the warehouse floor during the walkout. “This company makes so much money off the backs of us,” says one worker in a video of the Monday night action. “My life is not a means to an end,” she adds.
In the same video, another worker says management “waited for us to finish night shift before telling us” about a confirmed coronavirus case in the warehouse. “They didn’t call people until three more shifts [came in] the next day,” he says.