Thousands of Amazon delivery drivers and warehouse workers affiliated with the Teamsters union launched a strike at seven Amazon facilities across the country Thursday, just days before Christmas, The Associated Press reports.
The walkout, impacting hubs in Southern California (three locations), San Francisco, New York City, Atlanta, and Skokie, Illinois, follows the union’s unmet deadline for contract negotiations with Amazon.
The Teamsters, representing approximately 10,000 Amazon workers at 10 facilities, claim the strike involves workers at various sites, including delivery hubs and a California air hub. A separate strike authorization also covers an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, which unionized last year with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) and subsequently affiliated with the Teamsters. The union has not disclosed the exact number of participating strikers or the planned duration of the action, but one local Teamsters president stated the walkout would continue “as long as it takes.”
The primary demands of the striking workers include higher wages, improved benefits, and safer working conditions. The dispute centers around Amazon’s refusal to engage in direct negotiations with the Teamsters regarding drivers employed by contractors. Amazon maintains that these drivers are not its employees. The company has repeatedly rebuffed the union’s attempts to negotiate, leading to unfair labor charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
While a federal labor agency ruled in August that Amazon is a “joint employer” of these subcontracted drivers, leading to a September pay increase for them, Amazon continues to deny responsibility for negotiating directly with the Teamsters. Similarly, Amazon has resisted contract negotiations with unionized warehouse workers in Staten Island, filing a lawsuit challenging the NLRB’s certification of the ALU election.
Despite the strike, Amazon insists that it does not anticipate significant disruptions to holiday shipments, citing its extensive delivery network, contingency plans, and partnerships with other carriers like UPS. However, a prolonged strike could potentially cause delays in some metropolitan areas. An Amazon spokesperson dismissed the strikers as “almost entirely outsiders, not Amazon employees or partners,” a claim disputed by the Teamsters.
