As Salaamu Alaykum, Friend—
Together, we’ve been working to aid Muslim security workers at Amazon contractor SIS in their fight for basic fair treatment—but without the ability to form a union, they still keep on dealing with headaches and injustices.
The latest indignity? Muslim security workers at SIS have been singled out, asked to sign a waiver forfeiting their 30-minute lunch break during Ramadan. Observing your faith? That means you get less break time than your coworkers.
The waiver form is concerning all by itself. But it’d be less concerning if it weren’t part of a trend: Amazon’s security contractor, SIS, has a history of mistreating its Muslim workers.
I’m going to quote Abdinasir Elmi, a security officer at Amazon who’s been a key part of organizing efforts:
[This] feels like a continuation of the divide-and-conquer culture we have experienced at SIS, in which Muslim security officers are made to feel separate from the non-Muslim management.
Further, it is our firm belief that waivers are not the way forward at SIS--giving workers a real and permanent voice is.
We see the value in having a union, so that we can come together and seek positive change with one united voice, and without fear of retaliation. Rather than continuing on in an environment where we feel separate and distrustful of management decisions, we are seeking to be included in the process of making workplace improvements.
Muslim workers at Amazon have won real victories over the last few months—and we’ve been honored to stand behind them. They won access to the same prayers space as other workers at Amazon. And management backed down from retaliating against them for organizing.
But new issues are going to keep on coming up, over and over again, until Amazon workers have a union.
Luckily for us, SIS and Amazon already know the coalition for workers that we’re part of is real, otherwise they wouldn't have backed down multiple times this year already. And they know that we’re not going to stop—we can keep going as long as they can.