Portside

The Teamsters are spinning off momentum from recent organizing fights to new battle fronts across Amazon’s logistics chain.

A group of 100 warehouse workers at DCK6, an Amazon delivery station in San Francisco, marched on company managers October 2 demanding voluntary recognition rather than filing for a National Labor Relations Board-supervised election.

In the Teamsters’ strategy to organize the logistics behemoth by a thousand cuts, this is the first time that warehouse workers—rather than delivery drivers nominally employed by a subcontractor—have demanded recognition.

“I think that they suspected that something was up, because we were gathering in the parking lot, and one of the regional managers came out to suss us out and then went back inside,” said Dori Goldberg, who sorts packages and loads them onto trucks from 3:20 a.m. to 12 p.m.

“So I went inside, and he was trying to make small talk with me as I was leading him into the break room, where we had all assembled. When he came in, his face—he was shocked to see so many of our co-workers standing shoulder to shoulder.

“I could sense that he was scared. And it felt great to, for once, have our voices be heard by management and take that power back.”

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has described the company’s strategy as a “flywheel,” meaning that momentum in each area of the business spurs fresh momentum in others, accelerating the whole machine. It exploits its power in one business market after another—for example, retail—to consolidate its overall monopoly in logistics and make inroads against competitors like UPS, FedEx, and the Postal Service.

Teamsters are engaged in a similar strategy to challenge Amazon’s power—building momentum by organizing in various areas along its logistics chain.

SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED… LITERALLY

Goldberg said he and his co-workers were inspired by reports of other Amazon workers organizing in Skokie, Illinois; Queens, New York; and at the air hub KSBD in San Bernardino, California, where workers marched on the boss in September and won paid time off because of dangerous wildfire smoke.

“Amazon is hoarding billions of dollars in profits that they’re making off our backs, and we think that it’s time we stand up for ourselves and demand that we get our fair share,” Goldberg said.

Working at Amazon for over a year has taken a toll. “I often go home with pinched nerves,” he said. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with a sore back. And when I get home from work, I have no energy to do anything else.

“I used to be a healthy person before I started working here,” he said. “I don't know if it’s the stress of working at this facility, with all the particles in the air and the bad air quality in there, or having a weakened immune system from working these crazy hours that we do for Amazon. But I get sick all the time now.

“And I’m sick and tired of that—literally sick and tired of being sick and tired all the time. I’m motivated to organize because I want to be able to live my life outside of work and have a good-quality job where I am not overextended.”

JOINT EMPLOYER OF DRIVERS

Amazon worker committees, Teamster-affiliated and independent, in St. Louis, the Inland Empire of Southern California, the Chicagoland area, Minneapolis, Garner in North Carolina, and Atlanta have been organizing for better pay, heat protections, safety on the job, and disability accommodations.

Last month hundreds of Amazon drivers for three contractors, known in Amazon lingo as “delivery service partners,” at the DBK4 delivery station in Queens, New York, demanded the company recognize their Teamsters union and negotiate a contract. Soon after, drivers reached majority on union cards across all eight of the contractors at the facility; workers marched on management again and demanded union recognition.

“Dreams don’t work unless you do. So we have to work and strive for what we want!” said one of them, Jeffrey Arias. “I’ve been an Amazon driver for years, and it doesn’t get any easier—in fact, in the last year, it’s gotten a lot harder, with longer hours, more packages and hotter conditions.”

The National Labor Relations Board has been examining Amazon’s delivery service partner program. So far its regional directors in Los Angeles and Atlanta have found that Amazon should be deemed a “joint employer” of employees at two subcontracted delivery companies.

This week the regional director in Los Angeles issued a formal complaint against Amazon on this issue. The complaint accused Amazon of illegally firing its employees by terminating its contract with the DSP, Battle-Tested Strategies, shortly after drivers unionized. It also found that Amazon dissuaded workers from engaging in union activities, retaliated against them through “unlawful threats and promises,” and refused to share information with the Teamsters. Amazon can respond by October 15 to the complaint; otherwise the NLRB region will prosecute the company before an administrative law judge next March.

‘WE MADE THAT $1.50 RAISE HAPPEN’

Meanwhile hundreds of Amazon workers involved in an independent organizing effort also marched on management last month at the 3,000-worker STL8 fulfillment center outside St. Louis, Missouri, with 800 signatures on a petition demanding $25 an hour for all workers. They’ve been organizing since 2022 for higher wages and safe working conditions.

Their organizing got a boost from the UPS Teamsters contract in 2023, when workers began pressing the company ahead of its annual wage review to match the gains at UPS.

“If UPS wages go up, Amazon should do the same,” Paul Irving told Labor Notes last August. He and his co-workers struck Amazon on Black Friday in 2022; in response, the company boosted wages from $15.50 to $16.50 for part-timers, but it didn’t meet workers’ demands on safety.

Amazon reaped $30.4 billion in net profits last year.

With workers organizing across the country, Amazon recently announced it has hiked wages for drivers, up to $22 an hour from $20.50, and wages for hourly warehouse workers by $1.50 nationwide. Previously warehouse hourly wages topped out at $22, far below the industry average of $24.76, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Early this summer, we started wearing $25 buttons inside our warehouse and circulated petitions during breaks and shift changes,” said organizing committee member Ash Judd, who has worked at the STL8 fulfillment center since 2021.

“Amazon will put their own spin on this raise, but we know nothing moves without the workers, when it comes to getting customers their packages on time and when it comes to winning the higher pay we deserve,” said Judd. “We made this $1.50 raise happen through our tireless organizing, and we’ll keep fighting until we reach $25.”

TO BE TREATED WITH RESPECT

On Labor Day, Amazon warehouse workers outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, launched an organizing drive to petition the NLRB for a union election; the effort is the result of two and half years of organizing by the independent union Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE). Black and Latino workers make up the majority of the 5,000 workers at the 2 million-square-foot fulfillment center, RDU1.

Mary Hill, a leader of the organizing committee and a packer for four years, credits the independent union organizing at JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island, New York. The Teamsters now represent the only unionized Amazon warehouse in the U.S.—after workers at the hulking JFK8 fulfillment center, who formed the independent Amazon Labor Union two years ago, voted in June to affiliate with the Teamsters. Officer elections there in July put new leaders at the helm.

On September 18, Amazon workers there organized a march on the boss to deliver a petition with 1,100 signatures demanding reliable transportation to their homes after working 12-hour shifts. Their long commutes have worsened amid cuts to the public transit agency, the MTA. Workers called on Amazon to negotiate with the MTA to improve bus service to the warehouse and provide a shuttle bus for its workers, as well as rideshare discounts.

Will CAUSE become the second large Amazon warehouse to unionize? For the past two years, Hill and her co-workers have run petitions and phone banks and organized interest meetings to draw up demands from their co-workers.

“One of the main things, which I guess kind of gets pushed aside or not seen as readily recognizable, but to a lot of us, is to be treated with respect and dignity,” she said, “to not be hollered at, name-called, all that derogatory stuff.”

CAUSE President Reverend Ryan Brown credited UPS Teamsters’ lucrative contract last year for encouraging Amazon workers to organize for a substantial wage bump. “We hope that the Teamsters have the same success in organizing Amazon delivery stations,” he told Labor Notes after the UPS contract fight.

CAUSE is demanding a raise to $30 an hour and more personal time off. At KCVG, Amazon’s air hub in Northern Kentucky and the largest in the world, workers are also demanding $30 an hour. Workers at the 4,000-strong facility affiliated with the Teamsters in April.

“We spend more time there than we do with our families, and most of the people that work have two jobs,” said Hill. “Make that make sense, when we work for the richest sucker in the world!”

Luis Feliz Leon is a staff writer and organizer with Labor Notes.luis@labornotes.org