On April 9, 2025, Leony Salcedo-Chevalier, 34, was fatally struck by a box truck backing up in a loading dock at the JFK8 Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York. The victim and the 40-year-old driver of the box truck were both employed by one of the many third-party contractors Amazon uses for delivery truck services.

The father of two daughters, Ashley Yhose Tavarez and Yhosleimy Marie Salcedo, Leony Salcedo-Chevalier was buried on April 19 at the Alpine Cemetery in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Born in Santiago, Dominican Republic, he lived in Perth Amboy for many years.

After a few initial, perfunctory statements from the Teamsters, the New York City Central Labor Council and Democratic City Council members after Salcedo-Chevalier’ death, a deafening silence has prevailed in the seven weeks since the fatal accident. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OHSA) has issued no report from its investigation.

The Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which JFK8 workers elected to represent them three years ago, has not released any further details about the causes of the young worker’s death, let alone organized any collective action to hold the giant corporation to account. Now affiliated with the Teamsters, the ALU has backed a fraudulent petition campaign pushed by New York City Democrats urging Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to accept responsibility for the worker’s death and “implement meaningful and enforceable safety reforms.” 

The self-serving petition claims that the New York City and State Democrats who have showered Amazon with massive tax cuts and other subsidies “are committed to protecting the rights, health, and dignity of workers in our communities.” Nothing will come out of such campaigns, which subordinate workers to the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy, but another corporate whitewash.

Amazon is one of the largest private employers in the United States. With over 1.1 million workers, what happens at Amazon’s warehouses isn’t local—it’s national and international.

The company’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, backs President Donald Trump, who in return has nominated David Keeling, a former safety director for both Amazon and UPS, to head the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration—in a move hailed by Teamsters President Sean O’Brien.

Government investigations have found that Amazon warehouses have significantly higher injury rates than non-Amazon facilities. Amazon workers are twice as likely to be injured as others in the logistics industry and are forced to work at what one report described as “an extremely fast and often dangerous pace.” The company points to its safety protocols when a worker is killed, but investigations have found the company’s required rates make those procedures nearly impossible to follow. In other words, Bezos’ fortune is built on worker injury and death. Salcedo-Chevalier’s death is not an isolated incident. It is policy.

Amazon—like many corporations—uses subcontracting as a deliberate mechanism to evade legal liability and responsibility. At JFK8, the company has used the fact that Salcedo-Chevalier worked for a third-party vendor to delay any investigation that could hold it responsible for the tragedy. Workers see through this. As one put it plainly: “This is why Amazon hired contractors for a bunch of the more dangerous jobs. If someone dies, they say it’s not their fault and blame [third-party] contractors.”

Two days before Salcedo-Chevalier’s death, on April 7, Ronald Adams Sr., was crushed to death at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Complex in Michigan. The well-respected worker, father and grandfather, was pinned by an overhead gantry crane which suddenly activated while he was repairing machinery below.

In the more than seven weeks since the death of the 63-year-old skilled tradesman, his family and co-workers have not been given any substantial information about the causes of his death by Stellantis, the United Auto Workers or the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration. As of this writing, the Washtenaw Medical Examiner has not even released its autopsy report to establish the cause of death.

The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has initiated an independent investigation, to be led by rank-and-file workers, to end the coverup, reveal the real causes of Adams’ death and hold those responsible for this wholly preventable tragedy to account. The investigation is critical in providing workers with the information and organization they need to enforce safety standards themselves.

Following Salcedo-Chevalier’s death, Amazon workers began to take matters into their own hands. JFK8 workers on two successive shifts forced management to temporarily shut down the facility for most of the following day. Workers were able to win compensation for the closed shifts from management.

On April 28, the WSWS International Amazon Workers Voice issued a call for an investigation, to be conducted by rank-and-file JFK8 workers, into the circumstances of the needless death and for workers’ control over safety at every Amazon facility.

The statement read:

Whatever the immediate circumstances ... it is clear that the people responsible for Salcedo-Chevalier’s untimely death include Amazon management, company founder Jeff Bezos, and would-be dictator President Donald Trump, who is dismantling all workplace regulations, and the entire financial and corporate oligarchy which he serves. The worker’s death is not a freak accident but the predictable outcome of a systematic, profit-driven indifference to workers’ lives. Injury and death on the job has become a part of daily life for American workers, and Amazon leads the way.

The company is responsible for an extraordinary number of injuries. In 2023, the average injury rate for warehouses with more than 1,000 workers, excluding Amazon, was 3.8 per 100 workers, according to an analysis by the National Employment Law Project. Amazon reported an injury rate of 6.5 per 100 workers for 2023, which is 71 percent higher than that of its peers. Amazon’s rate of injuries requiring a job transfer was 5.1 per 100 employees: nearly double the national average for warehousing overall (2.6 per 100 employees).

Far from holding Amazon to account, OSHA and other government safety agencies have essentially given the corporation a free pass.

In the summer of 2022, three workers died of heat-related causes at separate Amazon warehouses in New Jersey. OSHA investigated the deaths and cleared Amazon of responsibility. It listed causes like “cardiac arrest,” denying heat was a factor—despite 90-degree days, no A/C, and pleas from workers for fans. At one facility, Amazon quietly upgraded the air conditioning—effectively admitting the problem without accepting responsibility.

As of December 2024, two of the three OSHA reports remain unreleased, despite court filings by a workers’ rights group. These delays—and OSHA’s refusal to name Amazon responsible—are not bureaucratic errors. They are part of a broader system designed to protect capital.

With Elon Musk—a notorious violator of workplace safety at Tesla, SpaceX and other companies—gutting OSHA through the Department of Government Efficiency, whatever remains of worker protections are being eliminated.

That is why the initiative must come from below. Workers cannot wait for state agencies or union officials to speak for them. The only way to defend life and safety is through independent rank-and-file action, like the independent investigation into the death of Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. initiated by the IWA-RFC.

A similar investigation must begin at JFK8 to break through the wall of silence by Amazon, the ALU-Teamsters and the official safety agencies and equip workers with the information they need to protect their lives. Only in that way can workers make sure that Leony Salcedo-Chevalier did not lose his life in vain.

This is not just about one workplace, or one death. It is about building rank-and-file committees across Amazon warehouses, auto factories and industries everywhere—in the US and internationally. Only through the international unity of the working class and the struggle to abolish the capitalist system can the sacrifice of workers’ lives and limbs for corporate profit be ended forever.

Amazon and other workers should support the independent investigation into the death of Ronald Adams and workers in other industries by filling out the form below.