With Christmas less than a week away, thousands of Amazon warehouse workers across the countries are on strike after the company refused to start contract negotiations with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Though it’s been well over two years since the first Amazon warehouse union was formed in New York City, and workers at several other warehouses across the country have started to unionize, the company has refused to recognize and negotiate a contract with the union.
The Teamsters gave Amazon a 15 December deadline to come to the bargaining table, which the company refused to acknowledge.
Here’s what you need to know about the Amazon warehouse strike.
Which Amazon workers are striking?
Amazon employs more than 1.5 million people around the world. The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) has gained about 10,000 workers across 10 facilities in the US over the last two years. In June, the ALU voted to affiliate with the Teamsters, which has 1.3 million union members across the country.
The Teamsters said that seven of the 10 facilities with unions are on strike. The warehouses include one in the borough of Queens in New York, one in Atlanta, three in southern California, one in San Francisco and a seventh in a Chicago suburb. The Teamsters said that Amazon Teamsters at other facilities “are prepared to join them”.
The union says the strike is the largest against Amazon in the company’s history.
How will the strike affect deliveries?
It’s unclear how the strike will affect operations. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of employees still working at delivery hubs and facilities that aren’t unionized.
The company said it does not anticipate the strike affecting its operations heading into Christmas.
But the Teamsters president, Sean O’Brien, said in a statement on Thursday morning that if Amazon customers have package delays, “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,” he said. “These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible. Instead, they’ve pushed workers to the limit and now they’re paying the price. The strike is on them.”
The Teamsters said its local unions will also put up picket lines at hundreds of other non-unionized Amazon fulfillment centers across the country.
How long will the strike last?
The Teamsters has not specified how long the strike will last, meaning it could go on past Christmas and into the new year.
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Why are Amazon workers striking?
Though thousands of its employees have voted to unionize, the company has staunchly opposed efforts to increase union membership and has refused to recognize some employees as Amazon workers.
The union wants Amazon to negotiate a contract with its members, who are demanding better wages, job security and benefits.
Amazon warehouse workers and delivery drivers have long reported conditions that can be taxing on workers. A report from a US Senate committee, led by the Democratic senator Bernie Sanders, released this week accused Amazon of putting workers under heavy quotas that risk their safety. The committee said that Amazon warehouses recorded 30% more injuries at its warehouses over the industry average. Amazon has said that the report is “fundamentally flawed”.
Why won’t Amazon negotiate with the union?
Some Amazon Teamster members are delivery drivers who work for third-party companies, called “delivery service partners”, who drive vans with Amazon logos but are technically not employed by the company.
Earlier this year, two regional directors with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued initial complaints that said Amazon is technically a joint employer of the drivers, even if they are hired by third parties. The hearing over an NLRB complaint in southern California is scheduled for March.
In September, Amazon filed its own complaint challenging the structure of the NLRB, arguing that it is unconstitutional because board members cannot be removed by the president. Though the company, along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which filed a similar suit, argued in front of a panel of judges from the US court of appeals for the fifth circuit in November, the court has yet to issue a ruling.
That’s all to say that Amazon’s resistance to recognizing the union is still tied up in court, and the company maintains that many of the unionized members are not its employees and that the union harasses and intimidates employees.
“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.