About 10,000 Amazon workers approve plan to strike Thursday: NPR

Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien, center, is shown with Amazon workers outside the Staten Island Amazon facility JFK8, June 19 in New York.

Stefan Jeremiah/AP

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Stefan Jeremiah/AP

About 10,000 Amazon workers have authorized a strike to begin Thursday morning as they seek better pay, safer conditions and longer breaks.

The Teamsters union says workers in New York City, Atlanta, California and Illinois are joining the strike. Warehouse workers and drivers at other facilities are also prepared to strike.

The strike comes in the middle of an important shopping period, but there has been no word on how long the strike is expected to last.

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

Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, stayed the first to organize in 2022. But Amazon has continually fought the decision in court, arguing that union leaders influenced how workers voted, an argument the National Labor Relations Board rejected almost two years ago.

They began as a small, independent union called the Amazon Labor Union, but in June merged with the Teamsters, which represents 1.3 million people across the United States and Canada.

“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to deliberately mislead the public — claiming they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers.’ They don’t, and this is yet another attempt to push a false narrative, ” Amazon spokesman Kelly Nantel said in a statement, The Associated Press reported.

Some of the strikers include third-party suppliers. The Teamsters used the terms “workers” and “members” in their statement about the strike.

Almost half of the people who plan to strike are members of the Staten Island union.

Gabriel Irizarry, a driver who works in Skokie, Ill., said, “Amazon is one of the biggest, richest companies in the world. They talk a big game about taking care of their workers, but when it comes down to it , Amazon doesn’t respect us and our right to negotiate for better working conditions and wages We can’t even afford to pay our bills.”

Leah Pensler, a warehouse worker in San Francisco, said, “What we’re doing is historic. We’re fighting a vicious union-busting campaign and we’re going to win.”