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"We are currently facing massive immigration enforcement raids in communities and workplaces across Southern California. Families are being terrorized by masked federal agents who are moving with impunity,” lamented Sheheryar Kaoosji, co-founder and executive director of Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC) that is currently organizing the vulnerable sector to protect themselves against these raids.

WWRC has been exposing the alleged connection between Amazon and the US Department of Homeland Security that reportedly contracts the online retailer to provide technology tools that make surveillance, raids and attacks possible. "Participation in border enforcement, policing and the genocide in Palestine… are sites of massive profits for Amazon and campaigning about these issues helps us illustrate how Amazon and other major tech companies are critical to a global system of oppression,” mentioned Kaoosji. "We see Amazon as the keystone to reviving labor in the United States, given its role as the largest and fastest growing employer in the state and one that is closely tied to major sectors of the economy including but not limited to tech (such as) books, film and media, electric vehicles, government and of course AI (artificial intelligence),” he added.

A campaigner for the labor movement, Kaoosji noticed that massive retailers like Amazon and Walmart were creating substantial environmental and social impact and making billions of dollars in profit but allegedly neither paying living wages to their workers nor providing significant tax revenues to the state. Through WWRC founded 15 years ago, workers have been encouraged to organize themselves and hold corporations like Amazon and Walmart accountable.

Responding to queries from Parsiana, Kaoosji referred to WWRC’s success with the Walmart supply chain which operated clusters of warehouses through third parties and staffing agencies that reportedly paid at or below minimum wage and had extremely harsh working conditions. Through litigation, Kaoosji stated they were able to recover over  $ 21 million (Rs 186.13 crore) for workers and also compel the warehouse operators to get rid of the staffing agencies and to hire workers directly. A few years later Walmart absorbed such warehouses and raised wages for thousands of workers, he added. 

In subsequent years WWRC was instrumental in the introduction and implementation of "policies affecting millions of workers including first in the nation indoor heat protection for all workers in California, and first in the nation regulation on pace of work in the warehouse industry.” Kaoosji explained that insistence on "high production quotas at warehouses led to high injury rates and turnover.”

Currently the 48-year-old executive director is focusing "on the larger strategy and ensuring we are organizing communities to bring about meaningful, winnable campaigns to change corporate behavior as well as public policy. I spend a lot of time on fundraising and administration as well, ensuring we operate with fiscal responsibility and legal compliance as a nonprofit organization in California.”

Born in Florida to a Zoroastrian father Yezdyar and Jewish mother Irene, Sheheryar has grown up in California. He studied literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz and earned his Master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of California, Los Angeles. Stating that he is not active in any Zoroastrian association, Sheheryar added, "My Zoroastrian roots manifest through the way my father taught me through practice of good words, good thoughts, good deeds. He worked in nonprofit organizations his whole career and was able to pass on both an ethic of dedication and moral clarity that I try to emulate.”