The Teamsters union has launched a multilocation strike against Amazon, but as with so many things involving the giant e-commerce retailer and logistics company, describing the labor action is no simple task.
The union said overnight in a prepared statement that workers would be setting up picket lines at seven Amazon locations, which are identified by a four-letter and numerical code: DBK4 in New York, DGT8 in Atlanta, DFX4, DAX5 and DAX8 in Southern California, CDK6 in San Francisco, and DIL7 in Skokie, Illinois, in suburban Chicago.
But while those are Amazon distribution facilities, the workers who drive the vehicles that service the last-mile business of Amazon are not Amazon employees. They are employees of the class of companies known as Delivery Service Partners (DSPs) that have been granted the right by Amazon to deliver parcels. According to an Amazon statement on its website, there are more than 3,000 DSPs and more than 275,000 drivers working at DSPs.
Those drivers’ employer is not Amazon; it is the DSP. However, there is an ongoing case before the National Labor Relations Board in its West Coast region to further adjudicate a subregion NLRB decision involving Amazon’s activities in Palmdale, California, that Amazon is a joint employer with the DSPs – a status the company strongly rejects.
But for now at least, when employees at those companies get their W-2s for tax purposes, Amazon is not listed as the employer. One of the 3,000-plus DSPs has that distinction.
(Informally, Teamsters representatives like to point out that these supposed non-employee drivers are wearing articles of clothing that say Amazon, drive a truck with the Amazon brand all over it and are delivering goods in Amazon boxes or packages.)
In its announcement of the strike, the Teamsters said the walkout was to begin at 6 a.m. Thursday. “The nationwide action follows Amazon’s repeated refusal to follow the law and bargain with the thousands of Amazon workers who organized with the Teamsters,” the union said.
That statement also quoted Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien saying any delays in getting Christmas packages is not as a result of the strike. Rather, he said, it is because of “Amazon’s insatiable greed.”
“We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members,” O’Brien said. “They ignored it.”
Amazon views itself as having no obligation to bargain. “I know that they want to unionize Amazon, and that’s their goal,” Eileen Hards, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said in an interview with FreightWaves. “So they’re claiming that we need to come to the bargaining table. And because we didn’t do that, because we don’t have an obligation to, that’s their reason for striking.”
Hards also said that “as of this morning, we haven’t seen significant employee walkouts.”
“The strikes are not as impactful as the Teamsters thought that they would be,” Hards said. “We’ve had no impact to our operations.So it’s kind of ended up sort of not something. I think they made it a bigger deal than it is turning out to be.”
The formal statement issued by Amazon said that the picket lines featured “almost entirely outsiders—not Amazon employees or partners—and the suggestion otherwise is just another lie from the Teamsters.”
“The truth is that they were unable to get enough support from our employees and partners and have brought in outsiders to come and harass and intimidate our team, which is inappropriate and dangerous,” the statement said. “We appreciate all our team’s great work to serve their customers and communities, and are continuing to focus on getting customers their holiday orders.”
Teamsters members have been taking to social media to report from the picket lines, such as this video from one of the facilities servicing JFK airport in New York.
The interaction among Amazon, Teamsters and the DSP program gives a level of complexity to labor relations at the company that makes it far different from more traditional negotiations, like the massive contract the Teamsters signed with UPS last year, considered a major win for the union.
For example, the Teamsters’ news site has numerous prepared statements touting unionization victories at facilities. In this statement announcing unionization success at the DGT5 Amazon facility in Atlanta, the Teamsters said in total it had been successful at organizing “nine Amazon locations and more than 7,000 Amazon workers have organized with the Teamsters across the country.”
Looking at NLRB election results, numerous victories for the Teamsters can be found at a variety of locations, as the union has racked up a strong record of winning representation votes as well as the UPS (NYSE: UPS) contract last year. This year, among other victories, it won a representation vote at a Kroger distribution center that it said was a first for that part of the grocer’s supply chain.
But the search through the database of NLRB election results does not turn up any victories among Amazon employees reported by the agency.
There is no inherent conflict between that and the fact that the Teamsters appears to be using card check in its approach to representation in many facilities. Under card check, a majority of workers can sign a card stating their desire to be unionized. That majority can then be challenged by the employer before recognition.
That substitute of a card check approach for a traditional election was apparently an element in Hards’ statement. “There are no DSP elections that they have won,” she said.
The one representation election unequivocally won by a union against Amazon was at a Staten Island, New York, warehouse where a grassroots union named Amazon Labor Union scored a representation victory in 2022. That union has since agreed to be brought into the Teamsters. There was a successful strike authorization vote there – no contract has been signed yet – but no walkout occurred since the strike authorization date of Dec. 15.
A recent successful drive at Amazon’s San Bernardino air facility, where the employees work for Amazon, not a DSP, was conducted under card check.
There is no obvious role for the Biden administration in the work disruption at the Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) facilities. But that did not stop a spokeswoman for the NLRB from sending out to the media a lengthy list of agency actions it has taken regarding Amazon.
One of the items on that list noted that on Nov. 5, an NLRB administrative law judge ordered a new union election at the Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama. However, the rank and file’s original rejection there of a union in 2021 was not a rebuff to the Teamsters; it was the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union that had sought to become the first union winning an election at an Amazon facility.
That did not occur. The Staten Island vote eventually earned that distinction.
A date for that third election in Bessemer has not been set yet.
In the midst of the focus on the Amazon labor disruption, the Teamsters may be preparing for a more localized walkout in Texas. More than 400 workers who drive for Sysco (NYSE: SYY), making food deliveries to grocery stores and restaurants, have voted to authorize a strike, according to the Teamsters.
Workers represented by the Teamsters in Louisville, Kentucky, and Indianapolis struck Sysco last year. In 2022, they walked off the job at Sysco facilities near Boston and Syracuse.
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