Thousands of Amazon workers go on strike Thursday

By Chris Isidore, CNN

New York (CNN) — Members of the Teamsters union went on strike at Amazon early Thursday in a labor action at seven facilities in four states coast to coast just ahead of the holiday gift-giving rush.

Amazon said that its operations will not be affected by any of the union’s actions. Although the Teamsters claim to represent 7,000 Amazon workers nationwide, that 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,” said Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien, in a statement posted on X.

The first location to be struck at 6 am ET Thursday was a facility in Queens. Then, an hour later, they were joined by workers in Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. At 9 am ET the strike expanded to locations in Atlanta, San Francisco, Victorville and the City of Industry, California.

“We are struggling 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 don’t have any Christmas presents under the tree this year. The wages and hours we get working for Amazon simply aren’t enough to get by in today’s economy.”

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

“It’s no longer going to be packages over people, profit over people. It’s people over packages, people over profits,” said Ash’shura Brooks, another driver in Skokie speaking outside the facility.

It’s not clear how long the strike will last. Shorter strikes have grown in popularity in recent years, with occasionally great success, like the 2023 strike at healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente. That’s opposed to the more traditional, open-ended strikes which go on until a new labor deal is reached, as was the case with the recent strikes at Boeing, Big Three automakers, and Hollywood studios.

Working for Amazon, but not Amazon

Since the Teamsters say its members are on strike as Amazon refuses to even negotiate, and since Amazon said it does not recognize the union, an open-ended strike seems unlikely. All a union spokesperson said Thursday is that the strike would last more than one day.

But by striking the week before Christmas and Hanukkah, the Teamsters hope to apply maximum pressure to Amazon, and perhaps convince some of its customers to shop elsewhere for last-minute gifts.

At the locations on strike and set to 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 to have joint employers — both the delivery service and Amazon. But Amazon and other business groups are challenging that rule.

“There are a lot of nuances here but I want to be clear, the Teamsters don’t represent any Amazon employees despite their claims to the contrary,” said Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for Amazon, in a statement. “This entire narrative is a PR play and the Teamsters’ conduct this past year, and this week is illegal.”

Brooks and Cianciotto mocked the idea that they’re not Amazon employees, even though their immediate employer is a third-party contractor. Brooks called the claim by the company “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 contractors is simply a way for Amazon to shed responsibility to negotiate with the drivers.

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

But the joint employer rule that the union is depending on to try to get a better deal for drivers is at risk of going away once President-elect Trump names a more business-friendly NLRB General Counsel and board members early next year.

An election certified, an election denied

But it’s not just drivers working for independent contractors which Amazon refuses to recognize as Teamsters members. Amazon shows no indication it is willing to reach a deal with the Teamsters or even recognizes that the union speaks for any of its workers, despite the union declaring that employees at numerous Amazon facilities have signed cards asking to join.

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

An upstart union, the Amazon Labor 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 that 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 to affiliate with the Teamsters, which is one of the nation’s largest and most powerful unions with 1.3 million members.

“Our employees have a choice of whether or not to join a union. They always have,” said Amazon’s Nantel. “We favor opportunities for each person to be respected and valued as an individual and to have their unique voice heard by working directly with our team.” Amazon is on record saying it believes the 2022 election in Staten Island was not a level playing field and that the results certified by the NLRB do not accurately reflect the opinion of the workers at the facility.

The union did not announce a strike at the Staten Island warehouse, even though the union had previously announced a strike had been authorized by rank-and-file members there. The union did not immediately say why those members were not set to join the strike.

This is story has been updated with additional reporting and context.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.