The Teamsters are cheering a decision by a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board that Amazon is a joint employer at a delivery service partner (DSP) in California that recognized a Teamsters local’s representation of the DSP’s drivers.
While the decision has not yet been published by the NLRB, the Teamsters said its delivery drivers who are represented by Local 396 in Palmdale, California, had won a victory at the NLRB’s Region 31 board, which operates in Los Angeles.
“After more than a year-long investigation, [the regional board] found that Amazon is a joint employer of its Delivery Service Partner (DSP) drivers and therefore has a legal duty to recognize and bargain with the Teamsters union,” the union said in a prepared statement.
A spokeswoman for the union said it had been informed by NLRB personnel about the decision.
The workers were employed by a DSP called Battle Tested Strategies (BTS). They voted last year to be represented by the Teamsters through a card check process, and the company recognized the union. Amazon soon after yanked the DSP contract with BTS.
Amazon has long held that drivers delivering goods ordered from Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) do not work for the logistics and retailing giant. Rather, they are employees of their DSPs, who have been granted the right by Amazon to serve a defined area.
But the decision by the regional board of the NLRB rejects that finding.
And in an acknowledgement of the stakes that the decision raises, the union said in its statement that it is “confident the NLRB’s regional determination for the Palmdale workers will extend to Amazon DSP drivers who unionize nationwide.”
The NLRB regional board authorized the issuance of a complaint against Amazon. That complaint will be heard at a trial before an NLRB administrative law judge in Los Angeles, according to Julie Gutman Dickinson, a partner at the law firm of Bush Gottlieb in Los Angeles and a longtime outside counsel for the Teamsters.
Dickson said whatever decision comes out of that trial could be appealed to the full NLRB in Washington. She said there was no firm estimate on when the trial might be scheduled.
“There are huge, huge legal implications, because we believe the model in Palmdale is the same as DSPs throughout the country,” Gutman Dickinson said. The regional decision “sets the stage” for a legal process that could determine that Amazon is a joint employer with the DSPs, “and will have a duty to recognize and bargain with any union that represents the majority of those employees.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from FreightWaves.
However, in comments to the Los Angeles Times, an Amazon spokeswoman said the NLRB had dismissed “most of the Teamsters’ more significant claims.”
“As they have been for over 15 months, the Teamsters continue to misrepresent what is happening here,” Eileen Hards told the newspaper. “As we have said all along, there is no merit to the Teamsters’ claims. If and when the agency decides it wants to litigate the remaining allegations, we expect they will be dismissed as well.”
But the Teamsters painted a different picture of the as-yet-unpublished decision.
“The NLRB Region in Los Angeles also found that Amazon engaged in a long list of egregious unfair labor practices at its Palmdale facility, including unlawfully refusing to recognize the workers’ decision to unionize with the Teamsters; failing and refusing to bargain with the Teamsters over conditions of employment and the effects of its decision to terminate its DSP’s contract; threatening employees with job loss; holding unlawful captive audience meetings; intimidating employees with security guards; and other illegal retaliation against the group of newly unionized workers,” the union said in its statement.
The reality on the ground for the roughly 85 BST workers at Palmdale who voted to unionize is that they have been on strike since April 2023 against an employer who had its DSP status revoked.
The Teamsters also are fighting a case before the NLRB with parallels to the Battle Tested case.
A DSP in Skokie, Illinois, Four Star Express Delivery, saw its roughly 100 drivers vote earlier this year to be represented by Teamsters Local 705. They struck in late June. The end result was a layoff notice and the termination by Amazon of the Four Star contract to be a DSP.
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