Amazon workers and family rally for safer working conditions at Edwardsville warehouse

Jeffery Hebb fought back tears Thursday as he talked about the last moments of his daughter’s life.

His daughter, Etheria S. Hebb, 34, of St. Louis was one of six workers who were killed when part of the roof and walls collapsed when a tornado hit an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville on Dec. 10.

“She didn’t worry about whether the job was safe or not,” Jeffery Hebb said after he described how his daughter was happy to get a job at the warehouse. “She didn’t think that she would leave the house and go to work and never come back.”

Hebb spoke during a rally organized by the Missouri Workers Center, a group that fights for workers’ rights. About 100 people gathered on a street in front of the damaged Amazon warehouse. Speakers called for safe working conditions and the creation of unions for Amazon and other non-union employees at companies nationwide.

“Amazon was supposed to keep them safe,” Hebb said of the workers. “They didn’t do that. They should have shut the plant down to make sure these workers were safe.”

After the rally, participants said they want building codes to be changed to require warehouses to have an emergency shelter or basement to protect workers.

Amazon officials previously have said that the building was built to meet code and that workers were instructed what to do during emergencies. The company also has said it will cooperate with all investigators reviewing what happened at the Edwardsville warehouse.

“Our focus continues to be on supporting our employees and partners, the families who lost loved ones, the surrounding community, and all those affected by the tornadoes,” Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said an email after the rally.

Arnetra Rhodes, 18, who is a cousin of Etheria Hebb, said she works part-time at an Amazon warehouse in St. Louis County. She said during the rally that Amazon should improve working conditions for warehouse employees.

“We’re just somebody to get them rich,” she said of the company officials.

Amazon should have a “safehouse” inside warehouses where workers can take shelter.

“We need to be protected,” Rhodes said.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday commented on standards for warehouses: “The question is, with all the warehouses that are being built or have been built, should we be setting a state standard for that? That’s something that no doubt will be explored during this session of the General Assembly.”

Pritzker did not say specifically what lawmakers would review.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, opened an investigation that will review whether Amazon had a “proper emergency action plan,” U.S. Department of Labor spokesman Scott Allen said in an interview in December. The agency does not review building codes.

Warehouse building code

The Rev. Darryl Gray of the Greater Fairfax Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis said the Progressive Baptist State Convention of Illinois is seeking to talk to Pritzker about workplace safety.

“We do have to push the legislators,” Gray said in an interview Thursday.

Gray said the building code in areas where tornadoes occur needs to be changed.

“When we’re talking about these types of environments, in these geographical areas, minimum standards have got to factor in natural disasters,” he said.

Gray said the warehouses should have a “hardened shelter or at least a basement.”

He urged Pritzker to review “what was done and what could have been done differently to avoid the tragic deaths that occurred.”

Once the solutions are identified, the changes must enacted into law, Gray said.

Terrence Wise, who works at a McDonald’s restaurant in Kansas City, said he traveled to the Edwardsville rally as a supporter of the Missouri Workers Center.

“Workers need more than just more money,” he said in an interview after he spoke during the rally. “We need a union. We need a seat at the table.

“Some people get hyped up about sports,” he said. “I get hyped about dignity, righteousness and justice. It’s important that we come together in a nation that is so divided. We have to find a common ground.”

The Missouri Workers Center, which says it aims to help low-wage workers fight racism and “win economic justice for all,” is a nonprofit group formed in March 2021.

Along with Etheria Hebb, the tornado claimed the lives of Clayton Lynn Cope, 29, of Alton; Kevin D. Dickey, 62, of Carlyle; Austin J. McEwen, 26, of Edwardsville; DeAndre Morrow, 28, of St. Louis; and Larry E. Virden, 46, of Collinsville.

The group said workers at the facility “have reported that they had not been adequately trained on emergency procedures and that the company failed to warn them about the tornado, even as it approached.”

An Amazon spokeswoman has previously said Amazon workers do get “emergency preparedness” training and that managers took action to protect workers on the night of the tornado in Edwardsville.

A wrongful-death lawsuit filed earlier this month alleged Amazon management directed McEwen and the other five people who were killed to shelter in a bathroom. The company “knew or should have known that this location would not protect them,” the lawsuit stated.

The workers died when the roof and walls of the south side of the 1.1-million-square foot building collapsed when struck by an EF-3 tornado that had winds up to 150 mph.

The building had an interior place away from windows for workers to gather on the north side of the warehouse but this part of the building was not constructed any differently than other sections of the building, Amazon officials have said.

Thirty-nine workers went to the “shelter in place” location on the north side while seven others were on the south side. One of the seven was rescued from the rubble.

The warehouse is at 3077 Gateway Commerce Center Drive South near the intersection of Interstate 255/Illinois 255 and Interstate 270.

Those who worked at the damaged warehouse were Amazon employees and employees of companies that contract with Amazon.

In a statement before the rally, the Missouri Workers Center raised several issues regarding workplace safety.

The group said it wants Amazon to end a ban on cellphone use. Nantel previously has said there was not a ban at the warehouse and employees were allowed to have cellphones.

The group also cited a Washington Post article that reported Amazon warehouses had a rate of serious injury incidents that was nearly double the rate of other warehouses in recent years and that critics blame “productivity pressures.” The Post, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, reported that Bezos told shareholders that “We don’t set unreasonable performance goals.”