Teamsters expand strike against Amazon

By Chris Isidore and Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN

New York (CNN) — The Teamsters union announced late Friday that warehouse workers at a massive Amazon sorting and distribution center in Staten Island, New York, have joined the thousands of union members who began a strike this week against the online retail giant.

But Amazon continues to insist the strike is not affecting shipments to customers, as it only affects a handful of its network of distribution centers. Amazon operates several other distribution centers within miles of its facility in the New York City borough of Staten Island, including a smaller nonunion one that is directly across the street.

“Our logistics infrastructure was built to deliver on our customer promise,” the company said Friday in a statement. “We believe in the strength of our network and plan for contingencies to minimize potential operational impact or costs.”

The strike is just the latest effort by the Teamsters and other unions to organize workers at Amazon, the nation’s second-largest private sector employer, which has more than 740,000 US workers spread across 1,000 warehouses and distribution centers, according to a recent government report. It is also among the most profitable companies, with net income of $39.2 billion in the first nine months of this year, more than double for the same period of 2023.

The Staten Island facility, and the seven other locations where drivers who make deliveries for Amazon are on strike, are a small fraction of Amazon’s massive network. But the Staten Island distribution center, known as JFK8, is a major one for Amazon. The union said it has more than 5,000 permanent hourly workers, a number which Amazon was not able to confirm or deny.

It also was the first Amazon location where workers voted to join a union. In April 2022, 55% of workers who participated in a representation election voted to join a union. Before there were efforts to unionize, there had been a walkout by some employees in March 2020 due to health concerns over the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The union said Friday night it has strong support among workers at the distribution center.

“I am thrilled to be part of this fight,” Valerie Strapoli, a worker at the Staten Island facility, said in a statement released by the union. “Amazon has shoved us around for so long, but we have the momentum now.”

But many of the current workers are temporary seasonal help brought on to handle the surge of holiday shopping orders. It is not clear how many of those temporary workers with few, if any, ties to the union will stay off the job in these final days, or if Amazon will even try to operate it with only partial staff.

The work stoppage is expected to be a set-duration strike, not a traditional strike that shuts down production until a contract agreement is reached, which is what happened in recent high-profile open-ended strikes at Boeing, the big three Detroit automakers and Hollywood studios. Amazon continues to insist the union doesn’t represent any of its workers and has no intention of holding talks.

But limited-duration strikes have been an increasingly common tool of US labor unions in recent years, sometimes to great effectiveness. It is clear in this case, given the timing of the strike, that the union is seeking to get maximum attention for its organizing efforts and perhaps cause some economic damage to Amazon, as well.

Another high-profile strike, at coffeehouse giant Starbucks, is also likely to be of only limited duration as the union there seeks to put pressure on the company to reach the first labor deal for workers at more than 500 of its stores.

History of conflict between Amazon, unions

Until Saturday, all the Teamsters strikers were drivers who work for outside contractors employed by Amazon for its dedicated delivery service. But this time even Amazon recognizes the employees at the Staten Island facility as its employees, although it continues to challenge the idea they are members of the Teamsters or any other union.

The Staten Island workers had voted in April 2022 to be represented by the upstart Amazon Labor Union in a vote certified by the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees labor relations at most US businesses. Despite that certification of the vote, Amazon continues to challenge it in court. Earlier this year, union members affiliated themselves with the Teamsters in a vote held by the union but not overseen by the NLRB. Amazon does not recognize that vote either.

“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,” Amazon said in its statement. “We appreciate all our team’s great work to serve their customers and communities, and thanks to them, we’re not seeing any impact to customers’ orders.”

The company has filed 17 complaints against the Teamsters or Amazon Labor Union for unfair labor practices, including allegations of intimidation. The Teamsters, ALU and other unions have filed hundreds of complaints against Amazon.

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