Delivery workers continued to picket Amazon facilities in New York City, Illinois, California, and Atlanta after launching a strike on Thursday, following the company’s refusal to engage in bargaining for a labor contract.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has been organizing the workers, though Amazon does not recognize those efforts and claims that the workers are not Amazon employees. (A stance federal labor watchdog the National Labor Review Board, or NLRB, disagrees with.)
The striking workers, who are primarily delivery drivers, are agitating for a contract that offers better pay and working conditions. The Teamsters gave Amazon until December 15 to start contract negotiations. Those did not transpire, leading to a strike timed for the week before Christmas as part of a push to bring the company to the bargaining table. It’s one of the biggest strikes in Amazon’s history, and it’s not clear how long it will last. And it’s already having legal consequences; an Amazon delivery driver and a Teamsters organizer were arrested at a Queens facility Thursday allegedly for disrupting traffic.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed,” Teamsters president Sean O’Brien said in a Thursday statement. “We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it.”
The delivery workers’ strike is part of a larger effort to unionize the workers, including delivery drivers and warehouse employees, who perform Amazon’s shipping and fulfillment services. The unionization battle has been ongoing for years. In 2022, labor organizers had their first major victory, when an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island voted to unionize and formed the Amazon Labor Union. Since then, the Amazon Labor Union joined the Teamsters, which bills itself as the largest labor union in North America and represents workers from a variety of industries, including transportation and health care. The Teamsters say the union represents 10,000 Amazon workers.
There is little indication this week’s strike will result in the type of win the Staten Island workers saw in 2022; Amazon has argued the strike won’t hurt its operations, and dismissed its validity. And while workers trying to organize at Amazon have notched some victories in cases before the NLRB, that body is expected to undergo major, pro-business changes in the incoming Donald Trump administration. All that puts the success of the striking workers, and how the federal government will treat labor in the years to come, in doubt.
Workers are striking to make a statement
It’s not clear how many workers are striking, but they represent only a fraction of the approximately 800,000 people who make up Amazon’s delivery workforce.
Amazon warehouse workers’ poor working conditions, including injuries and insufficient access to medical care, have been well-documented, including in a new Senate report. That’s what inspired the first unionization effort at the Staten Island warehouse.
Drivers and delivery workers say they struggle, too.
“The pay needs to be better. The health insurance needs to be better,” Thomas Hickman, a Georgia-based delivery worker, told CNN. “We need better working conditions. If we do have 400-plus packages, we need someone to be a helper with us, to ride with us.”
This strike isn’t focused on working conditions or pay and benefits exactly, although that’s part of it; it is what’s called an unfair labor practices strike, because Amazon refused to bargain with the workers by the deadline the Teamsters gave Amazon management. The workers are striking to get the company to negotiate a labor contract that sets out acceptable working conditions, pay, benefits, and more. The workers hope to get their rights and benefits enshrined so they can’t be arbitrarily removed by the company.
The Teamsters maintain that the company is violating labor law by refusing to negotiate a contract.
“In some ways, this isn’t so unique,” Eric Blanc, professor of labor relations at Rutgers University’s school of management and labor relations, told Vox. “In many cases, employers will ignore labor laws and refuse to bargain. Sometimes, striking is the way to get them to the table.”
Amazon, however, maintains that the striking workers aren’t even Amazon employees.
“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,” Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for Amazon, told CNN. “This entire narrative is a PR play and the Teamsters’ conduct this past year, and this week is illegal.” Vox reached out to Nantel to clarify which actions Amazon believes to be illegal but did not receive a response by publication time.
According to Amazon, these drivers and delivery workers work for a third-party contractor — what they call a delivery service partner (DSP). But Amazon doesn’t name the DSPs and advertises for those delivery jobs on Amazon websites. Delivery workers drive Amazon-branded vans and wear Amazon uniforms; they deliver Amazon packages, and Amazon “completely dictates the way the third-party company operates,” Rebecca Givan, professor of labor relations at Rutgers University’s school of management and labor relations, told Vox. “Amazon sets the terms.”
The Teamsters filed unfair labor practice charges against Amazon and one of its California DSPs, Battle Tested Strategies, in 2023, saying that Amazon and the DSP are joint employers of dozens of delivery workers the Teamsters had organized there. In August of this year, the NLRB ruled that Amazon and Battle Tested Strategies were joint employers, and in September, an NLRB regional director lodged a formal complaint against Amazon.
Amazon is not likely to back down any time soon — and the stakes are high
Amazon has “made it very clear that they have no intention of bargaining” with the workers, Seth Harris, senior fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change and former top labor policy advisor to the Biden administration, told Vox.
First of all, Amazon’s business model depends on low-cost labor and that is easily replaced during periods of high turnover, according to all of the labor experts Vox spoke to. Putting a contract in place that guarantees workers certain levels of pay, benefits, and workplace safety contradicts that model.
Amazon hasn’t recognized the original Amazon Labor Union, even though it is recognized by the NLRB. And they have also spent “tens of millions” of dollars over the years on illegal union-busting activities, Blanc said, including threatening employees’ wages and benefits if they unionized, removing information about union efforts from a digital message board, and firing workers for unionizing.
There are federal laws governing how companies are meant to interact with unions and collective action efforts. But there’s no real penalty for failing to negotiate with workers, Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told Vox.
The NLRB is tasked with adjudicating labor disputes, but Amazon (as well as Elon Musk’s SpaceX) have filed lawsuits claiming the NLRB and the current dispute resolution system is unconstitutional. If courts rule in favor of Amazon and SpaceX, that could significantly alter how the federal government handles labor disputes.
Therefore, Amazon can just “delay, delay, delay” negotiating a contract with the striking workers, Wheaton said, hoping that they win their case, or that they will soon have a Trump administration that is much more antagonistic to labor, and an NLRB that is much more friendly to corporations. President-elect Donald Trump will get to fill at least two seats on the NRLB, and is expected to select pro-business candidates; his labor secretary pick, however, is viewed as more pro-labor than expected.
Regardless of what stance the incoming administration takes, the unionization push at Amazon, which has only grown over a relatively short period of time, is likely to continue.
“This strike is a way of making it clear to the company — and the public — that [the push to unionize and negotiate a contract] is not going away,” Blanc said.
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