Amazon delivery drivers at several of the retailer’s hubs went on strike Thursday demanding the company bargain a union contract, according to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The Teamsters said the walkouts hit seven facilities in New York, California, Georgia and Illinois less than a week before Christmas. It was unclear how many workers took part or how much the strikes disrupted deliveries.
Sean O’Brien, the union’s president, said in a statement that Amazon had “pushed workers to the limit.”
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed,” O’Brien said. “We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it.”
Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, said the company hadn’t seen “any impact on our operations” due to the walkouts. She also accused the Teamsters of “threatening” and “intimidating” workers into joining the union.
“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,’” Nantel said in a statement. “They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative.”
The Teamsters have been trying to organize the nonunion drivers who work out of Amazon’s hubs. Those drivers technically work for outside contractors — “delivery service partners,” in Amazon-speak — but the union argues the world’s largest online retailer is the one that controls the working conditions.
Videos posted to social media on Thursday showed drivers marching outside an Amazon facility in New York City. Luis Feliz Leon, a writer and organizer for the publication Labor Notes, reported that police arrested one driver who had tried to join the protest.
Amazon has insisted it doesn’t legally employ the drivers, although the drivers wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon-branded vans and deliver Amazon packages.
Prosecutors at the National Labor Relations Board have challenged Amazon’s position, asserting that the retailer is really a “joint employer” of delivery drivers at a hub in Southern California. But such cases take years to litigate, and Amazon is likely to find a more employer-friendly NLRB under President-elect Donald Trump.
The Teamsters also represent several thousand employees at Amazon’s JFK8 fulfillment center in New York City, which became the first and, so far, only Amazon facility to unionize through an election. (Workers voted to join the new and independent Amazon Labor Union, which later affiliated with the Teamsters.)
Amazon has not bargained with the JFK8 union in more than two years and continues to challenge the union’s legitimacy through the NLRB and court.
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After labor board prosecutors brought charges against Amazon alleging it had failed to bargain with the union, the company filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the structure of the NLRB is unconstitutional. The case could land before the Supreme Court and undermine the board’s powers.
Amazon has spent millions of dollars trying to persuade workers not to form unions, including more than $14 million in 2022 alone.