ing but unsafe. People were getting hurt in
the course of meeting their quotas. The US
Occupational Safety and Health Adminis-
tration requires companies to log any work-
related injuries or illnesses that involve
loss of consciousness, work restrictions or
reassignments, or treatment that exceeds
basic first aid, along with a few other cri-
teria. In 2017, according to OSHA docu-
ments obtained by wired, the warehouse
in Shakopee reported an average of eight
such events a week, mostly sprains, strains,
and contusions. The month of July, which
includes Prime Day, Amazon’s summer ver-
sion of Black Friday, saw the most logged
incidents. The other two months with the
most such events were November and
December—the peak holiday rush. (In 2018,
the company says, it invested more than $55
million in safety improvements.)
The workers who gathered at Awood
were also constantly afraid of being fired or
“written up” for falling behind on their quo-
tas amid breaks for prayer. But above all,
they came to focus on one fact that height-
ened all their other anxieties: Ramadan was
coming around again, and they wanted to
do something to avert how bad it had been
the previous year.
In early May, Amazon management
announced that they’d heard some concerns
about Ramadan, so they scheduled two
open meetings where workers could discuss
the holiday with them inside the warehouse.
Small crowds showed up for the sessions,
which took place inside a conference room
with managers at the front. Workers rattled
off a number of desires: lower productivity
rates for the holiday, more breaks, some
kind of respite from heat, time off for Eid
al-Fitr, the festival that concludes the holy
month. According to Stolz, the managers’
replies were noncommittal. (Amazon says
the purpose of these meetings was just to
hear from the workers.)
Awood’s response, meanwhile, was tac-
tical. That month the center had hired its
first executive director, Abdirahman Muse,
a 36-year-old Somali immigrant who had
worked as a warehouse laborer, organizer,
and policy aide to the mayor of Minneap-
olis; Muse says that his first goal, now that
Awood had built up a base of support, was
to “take the fight to Amazon publicly.”
So workers in Shakopee promptly began
to hand out leaflets calling for Muslim
employees to show up for work on the first
day of Ramadan—May 15—wearing shirts
and hijabs that matched the color of the
Somali flag. The show of force, called Blue
Day, was meant to draw media attention to
Amazon’s failure to accommodate Muslim
workers for the holy month.
Soon after those flyers went out, Awood
says, warehouse management agreed to
create dedicated prayer rooms and prom-
ised to lighten quotas for Ramadan. Blue
Day was called off. Shortly thereafter, an
Awood organizer spotted two Amazon man-
agers at Karmel Mall, a Somali shopping
center, negotiating with a merchant over
the cost of 60 to 80 new prayer rugs.
On May 15, 2018, Amazon distributed its
new prayer rugs and agreed to convert a
conference room into a quiet prayer room,
though it would be available only on Fri-
days. The company also says it began allow-
ing workers to transfer to the night shift so
they wouldn’t have to work during periods
of fasting, approving leaves of absence for
Ramadan—though workers say these were
unpaid—and offering unlimited time off to
workers who wished to celebrate Eid. (An
Amazon spokeswoman says, “Our policies
on religious accommodations were made
as part of long-term plans, not as a direct
result of Blue Day.”)
The promise of a prayer room heartened
the activists, and it helped that the ware-
house was also now cooled by large fans.
But then Ramadan began, and workers
say the quota system didn’t change. When
Amazon fired one Somali American who
fell behind on her rate while fasting, the
Awood Center posted an online petition
that would receive more than 12,000 sig-
natures. It read: “Before Ramadan, Amazon
promised its Muslim employees that the
company would ease off its usual gruel-
ing daily productivity requirements during
the holy month. But just three days into
Ramadan, [a Muslim worker] was fired by
Amazon for—you guessed it—not meet-
ing her productivity requirements.” The
group demanded that the worker get her
job back. (The worker could not be reached
for comment. Amazon does not speak pub-
licly about individual cases but said that
productivity quotas are evaluated over a
long period of time and that the companyprovides dedicated coaching to under-
performing employees. Amazon did not
comment on whether it ever committed
to lighter quotas.)
Awood upped the ante again, inviting
reporters to a protest outside the Eagan
delivery station on June 4. That day, a hand-
ful of Amazon employees stood chant-
ing “Yes, we can!” in Somali (“Haa waan
awoodnaa!” ) and English. They presented
managers with a list of demands, including
lighter workloads during the Ramadan fast.
Stories about the protest appeared on Min-
nesota Public Radio and in local news out-
lets, and the media blitz put Amazon on the
defensive; the company responded by tout-
ing its workplace benefits and its plans to
build a permanent prayer room for Muslim
workers at the facility. But on some points,
Amazon would not budge: Workers who
prayed, the company made clear, were still
expected to meet the same hourly quotas,
unless they wanted to dip into their unpaid
time off. The principle of speed, it seemed,
was not up for negotiation.
Behind the scenes, Amazon agreed to
meet with the workers who had organized
under Awood. And on September 25, after
much back and forth, about 12 workers,
three Islamic community leaders, Muse,
Nimo Omar, and four Amazon manag-
ers met in a rented conference room at a
Minneapolis institution called the African
Development Center. The walls were dec-
orated with paintings of Somali pastoral
scenes. The group of workers explained
their concerns about hourly productiv-
ity quotas, the warehouse’s response to
workplace injuries, and the lack of Afri-
can managers, among other things. Ama-
zon, which says it welcomes diversity at
all levels, promised to look into the issues
they had raised. One of the workers, Khadra
Kassim, was delighted to notice that the
managers seemed nervous.
At a second meeting, on October 28—
for which Amazon flew in a Libyan Amer-
ican manager from Texas—the company
presented the group with some responses
to their concerns. The workers then broke
away to discuss whether they were satisfied
with Amazon’s presentation. They weren’t.
So they gave Amazon until November 15 to
give them a better answer. Amazon’s second
response felt like more of the same.
On November 20, The New York Times
published a story about Awood’s meetingsAn inspirational
display at MSP1.