HERE'S WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON AT AMAZON IN SHAKOPEE, MINNESOTA

HERE'S THE REST OF THE STORY ABOUT WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON OUT AT AMAZON IN SHAKOPEE, MINNESOTA. WHAT THE MEDIA WON'T TELL YOU.

A female Somali worker, who doesn't speak English, was fired because she said she was too weak to work after fasting for 18 days during Ramadan. A new "Somali union" was organized by a former aide to Democrat Mayor Betsy Hodges to help the 100,000 Somali workers in the Twin Cities demand respect, reduced hours, reduced work load, more promotions and more religious accommodation. Here's more:

NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS: Somali women packers for the giant Amazon distribution center in Minneapolis are fired up and refusing to speed up the production line, becoming the first known group to defy Amazon management and bring them to the bargaining table.

“Nobody would assume a Muslim worker with limited language skills in the middle of Minnesota could be a leader in a viable fight against one of the biggest employers in the world and bring them to the table,” said Abdirahman Muse, executive director of aWood, the Somali word for “power.”

But when a worker lost her job, unable to meet demands to pack more and faster when she had just finished 18 days of fasting over Ramadan, her frustration was shared throughout the plant. BTW, fasting means they can still eat from sunset to sunrise.

“The new managers are like military—they don’t give you respect,” said Amazon worker Sofia Ahmed Ibrahim, who once worked for the U.S. and U.N. aid groups before fleeing from Somalia to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.

Hibachi Mohamed said Amazon let her take paid breaks to pray, as required by state law, but her managers made her keep up with the quota, like everybody else.

Sixty percent of Amazon’s 3,000 workers in the region are East African, aWood estimates, but only one manager speaks Somali. Amazon disputes that number, saying there are a lot fewer East Africans, and four area managers who speak Somali.

Amazon has now agreed to require a general manager and a Somali-speaking manager to agree on any firings related to productivity, to respond to individual complaints within five days and meet with workers quarterly, according to The New York Times.

But a group of approximately 40 workers say that isn’t enough. Their main concern—the pace at which they are expected to work, from 160 items an hour to 230, wasn’t addressed. They voted to stage a large protest and walkout Dec. 14, in the middle of the holiday season.

“We are not asking them to cater to East African workers,” said Muse. “We are just asking them to treat workers humanely.”
A petition to Amazon to restore Sofia Barrow’s job can be found on www.awoodcenter.org.

Who is helping the Somali workers organize against Amazon? A former aide to Democrat Mayor Betsy Hodges. He started a firm called Awood.

FORMER MINNEAPOLIS MAYOR, DEMOCRAT BETSY HODGES' SENIOR AIDE IS THE MAN ORGANIZING THE NEW SOMALI WORKERS UNION AGAINST AMAZON.

MINNESOTA: Did you know that the person who is organizing the Somali workers against Amazon is a man named Abdirahman Muse, who used to work for Mayor Betsy Hodges? Yes, he started a "NON-PROFIT UNION" to help Minnesota's Somali workers take on employers called the Awood Center. Wood means POWER in Somali.

Awood Center is a nonprofit housed inside the Bethany Lutheran Church in Minneapolis and was founded last year in response to the growing number of Somali concerns in Minnesota from the 100,000 Somali & East African workers in the Twin Cities.

Among those issues, said Awood Center Executive Director Abdirahman Muse, are disrespect, wage theft, wrongful terminations and harsh work conditions. Last month, Awood targeted Amazon after receiving a number of complaints from East African workers at the company’s Eagan warehouse and Shakopee warehouses. Here's an interview Mr. Muse had with the MinnPost:

MinnPost: Before we start talking about Awood Center, tell me a little bit more about you. I know you worked for former Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges.

Abdirahman Muse: Yes, I worked for the mayor for four years as a senior policy aide. One of the things I focused on was labor relations. I dealt with a lot of work-related issues; I maintained relationships with union organizations and addressed their issues at the Mayor’s Office.

Before that, I was an organizer with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. I worked on many important projects with other organizers at SEIU. I was one of five organizers that helped pass a bill that unionized home care workers in Minnesota. Because of that campaign, we managed to help more than 25,000 home care workers to form a union and to have workplace rights and to collectively bargain with the state so they can improve their working conditions.

MP: Now you’re leading Awood Center. What is it in a nutshell?

AM: Awood Center is a place for the East African workers to learn about their rights at work. It empowers them and advocates on their behalf.

CTUL [Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha/Center of Workers United in Struggle] is the only other another organization in the Twin Cities that is close to the work Awood Center does. But CTUL mostly focuses on the Latino community. So, we’re the CTUL version of East Africans.

MP: There are so many nonprofit organizations serving immigrants and refugees in Minnesota. How is Awood Center any different?

AM: When people think about East Africans, they think of them just as immigrants and refugees. But they are also workers. In fact, the majority of the community are participating in the workforce. Many of them work in low-wage industries as assembly line workers, cleaners, cashiers and drivers.

Many of them come to us and tell us that they face many work-related issues. They complain about lack of respect at the workplace, hidden discrimination and lack of promotion. Some people come to us and say, “Hey, we’re East-Africa-majority workers at this company; we’ve been there for a long time, but none of us has been promoted to a managerial position.”
But they never had a place that specifically addresses work-related issues. So we realized that there is a huge need for this center. People need to know where to go and how to fight back when they’re mistreated or face discrimination in the workplace.

MP: What exactly does the organization do for these workers?

AM: We’re not a union; we educate workers about their rights as employees. For example, when they reach to us, we assess their situation. Then we decide the best approach to help them fight back. That can be through a legal process. It can be workers organizing. It can be an advocacy work.

We deal with different industries. Now, we’re dealing with Amazon, where we see many folks who are working in warehouses. In many cases, they make up the largest number of the employees.

They have been complaining about difficult working conditions at Amazon. They’ve been pressured to produce a lot beyond their human capacity. So we’ve been working with them to make sure that they have a voice.

We did that by organizing them and raising awareness about the poor working environment they’re in. In May, we helped them organize a protest in Eagan to fight back to ensure they are respected and are treated fairly.

Also, just last week, Uber drivers reached out to us about work-related issues. They feel like they’ve been discriminated against. So we’re working with them right now to see what we can do to help.

MP: So most of the clients at Awood Center are immigrants and refugees with language barriers?

AM: Most of them are new immigrants. In this hostile debate about immigration, many of them are hesitant to speak up and to talk about the discrimination they face — even when they realize they’ve been discriminated against.

But when they come to us, we educate them about the fact that they have — as human beings, as citizens, as workers — rights in this country.

MP: How many staffers does your organization have?

AM: We now have four staff members, but we’re hoping to expand in the coming years. The need for our service is so huge. There are about 100,000 East African people in the Twin Cities, and most of them are workers. Right now, we’re the only voice they have and we try to fill that gap.

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