Labor organizing is gaining renewed momentum among some Amazon employees in the United States. The retail giant—run by the richest man in the world—is now one of the largest employers in the country, with more than 125,000 full-time hourly associates working in its fulfillment and sortation centers alone. Throughout Amazon’s 24-year history, portions of its enormous US workforce have attempted several times to form a union, but the company has consistently—and successfully—fought back. Now, amid a tight labor market, workers in Minnesota have succeeded in getting management to meet some of their demands. On Friday afternoon, they staged a protest at an Amazon facility on the outskirts of Minneapolis to ask for even more.

Over the summer, a group of East African Amazon workers in the Minneapolis area began negotiating with Amazon to make compromises around Ramadan holiday hours, better responding to worker complaints, and building a dedicated prayer space in the Shakopee fulfillment center. Unsatisfied with the pace of progress toward improving working conditions, the group rallied a few hundred people, including local teamster chapters, to the Shakopee facility parking lot Friday afternoon to demand that Amazon reduce productivity rates to safe levels, respect the cultural differences of Muslim East Africans, and invest in a community fund to aid in affordable housing for workers.

At 4 pm, as the winter sun was setting on the Shakopee business park, about 30 workers walked out of the fulfillment center to the cheers of the crowd gathered on the edge of the property. “Haa aan awoodno!” they chanted, which means “Yes we can” in Somali. Abdukadir Ahmed was the first one to reach the crowd. Tall and thin with black fleece earmuffs covering his tight curls, the 35-year-old arrived in Minneapolis from Egypt in March of last year, and has been working at Amazon as a package scanner for a year and a half. On a typical day, he says, he will work a 10-hour shift, and scan and rebin up to 600 packages each hour. “They’re always pushing, pushing all the time,” says Ahmed. “Nobody appreciates us, they just treat us like robots.” He’d like to see his hourly rate drop to something more like 180 packages per hour.

For about an hour, protesters clad in parkas and khamiis shivered in freezing temperatures as they listened to organizers speak about taking back some of Amazon’s billions for local Minnesota communities. Around 5 pm, the group marched to the facility’s front doors to deliver its demands to managers inside. They were stopped by a dozen Shakopee police squad cars and told to leave the premises or they’d be arrested for trespassing. Organizers corralled the rally back to the street, with shouts of “Amazon, we’ll be back” trailing behind them.

Hafsa Hassan, a 21-year-old who works on the Shakopee facility’s shipping dock, says outrage has been simmering for longer than the 16 months she’s been an Amazon employee. “People are just fed up,” she says. “We knew it was a hard job physically but nobody signed up for the mental and emotional abuse.”

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Ashley Robinson, a spokesperson for Amazon, said in a statement that the company has an “open and direct dialogue with employees” in Minnesota. She says the average pay for Amazon workers in the state is between $16.25 and $20.80 in addition to full benefits; the minimum wage in Minnesota is $7.87. “I encourage anyone to compare our pay, benefits, and workplace to other retailers and major employers in the Shakopee community and across the country. We invite anyone to see for themselves and take a tour through our fulfillment center tour program,” the statement reads, in part.

On Wednesday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos pledged $2.5 million to a Minneapolis nonprofit that helps homeless individuals and families find affordable long-term housing. At the rally Friday, Imam Mohamed Omar, a founding member of the Muslim Coalition of the Minnesota faith-based organization ISAIAH, applauded the move but emphasized that one-off charitable donations are not the intended outcome of the ongoing negotiations. “It's good to put ointment or a Band-Aid on a wound, but prevention is the best medicine,” Omar said. He called for Bezos to invest portions of Amazon’s annual revenues in a Community Care Fund, so that Amazon can "pour back into our communities a portion of what they have taken."