Thousands of Amazon workers go on strike on Thursday

New York
CNN
—

Members of the Teamsters union went on strike at Amazon early Thursday in a job action that was set to spread to six facilities in four states coast to coast.

Amazon said its operations will not be affected by any of the union’s actions. Although the Teamsters claim to represent 7,000 Amazon workers nationwide, it accounts for less than 1% of the company’s US workforce.

“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement published on X.

The first place attacked at 6 a.m. ET Thursday, was a facility in Queens. Then an hour later they were joined by workers in Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.

“We’re fighting and fighting for basic benefits and needs that are otherwise an industry standard,” said driver Luke Cianciotto, speaking to reporters outside the Skokie facility just before the start of the strike there. “Many of us, we have no Christmas presents under the tree this year. The wages and hours we get working for Amazon are simply not enough to get by in today’s economy.”

The union pointed to Amazon’s profits, which have particularly increased in recent years. Amazon reported net income of $39.2 billion in the first nine months of this year, more than double the same period in 2023, with revenue of $450.2 billion so far this year, making it the world’s second-largest private company after only Walmart in terms of revenue.

“It will no longer be packages over people, profit over people. It’s people over packages, people over profit,” said Ash’shura Brooks, another Skokie driver who spoke outside the facility.

At the locations that are on strike and will strike Thursday, the union claims to represent drivers who work for an Amazon contractor. The union claims that under a rule announced by the NLRB, they can be considered joint employers — both the delivery service and Amazon. But Amazon and other business groups are challenging that rule.

“There are many nuances here, but I want to be clear, the Teamsters do not represent any Amazon employees, despite their claims to the contrary,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a statement. “This whole narrative is a PR game and the Teamsters’ behavior this past year and this week is illegal.”

Brooks and Cianciotto scoffed at the idea that they are not Amazon employees, even though their immediate employer is a third-party supplier. Brooks called the company’s claim “heartbreaking … for Amazon to tell us we’re not Amazon drivers when we wear Amazon vests and deliver in Amazon vans.”

Cianciotto said the use of third-party vendors is simply a way for Amazon to abdicate responsibility for negotiating with the drivers.

“These third-party vendors don’t exist without Amazon,” he said.

But the common employer rule the union relies on to try to get a better deal for drivers is at risk of disappearing when President-elect Trump appoints a more business-friendly NLRB General Counsel and board members early next year.

But it’s not just drivers working for independent contractors that Amazon refuses to recognize as Teamsters members. Amazon shows no sign that it is willing to reach an agreement with the Teamsters or even acknowledge that the union is speaking on behalf of any of its workers, despite the union stating that employees at several Amazon facilities have signed card asking to become a member.

Unions typically win worker representation by applying to hold elections overseen by the NLRB. While voluntary recognition of a union by an employer is permitted under labor law, it is relatively rare and seems virtually impossible in this case given Amazon’s stated positions. But instead of seeking votes to win representation recognized by the NLRB, the union is demanding that Amazon recognize workers who signed cards asking to join the union.

The Amazon Labor Union, an upstart union, won such a vote at Amazon’s Staten Island facility in April 2022. And that vote was certified by the NLRB. But despite repeated setbacks in court, Amazon continues to fight the results of the election in further court appeals.

Other union representation votes have failed at other Amazon facilities before and since then. The ALU members voted in June affiliated with the Teamsterswhich is one of the country’s largest and most powerful trade unions with 1.3 million members.

The union did not announce a strike at the Staten Island warehouse, although the union had previously announced that a strike had been authorized by rank-and-file members there. The union did not immediately say why these members were not prepared to participate in the strike.

The other locations to be attacked later Thursday morning include those in Atlanta, San Francisco, Victorville and the City of Industry, California.

This is a development story. It will be updated.