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Dec 20, Friday, America: Amazon Drivers have gone on strike in four states across America amid the holiday season. The company said it will not affect your holiday deliveries.
The Teamsters Union the largest labor union in the country claim to represent 7,000 Amazon workers nationwide, which accounts for less than 1% of the company’s US workforce. Amazon says that these employees are not their employees at all, despite them wearing Amazon vests, driving Amazon vans, and exclusively delivering Amazon packages.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” said Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien, in a statement posted on X.
Amazon maintains that the drivers are employed by third-party contractors and not directly by the company, asserting that it is not obligated to negotiate with the union. The company has also accused the Teamsters of engaging in illegal activities to coerce employees and third-party drivers into joining the union.
Amazon’s statement emphasized its argument that the Teamsters do not represent anyone on the Amazon payroll. The National Labor Relations Board has only certified one group of Amazon workers as being in the union.
The workers have begun the strike on Thursday morning in north suburban Skokie. Workers walked off the job around 6 a.m. on Thursday. The Amazon employees were seen holding signs that read “Amazon is unfair” picketing outside the Skokie Amazon facility. After Teamsters at the DCK6 Amazon Facility in San Francisco voted to authorize the strike in their fight for union recognition and a fair contract, the San Francisco facility became a part of the strike. Strikes are happening there and at five other delivery stations in Southern California, New York City, and Atlanta
The union said that they are fighting for a contract with better wages and workplace safety. The union said that it gave Amazon until Dec 15 to negotiate a contract. This happened after hundreds of delivery drivers at the Skkiedelivert warehouse organized Teamsters Local 705 (Chicago, Illinois) this year. Despite this Amazon has sustained with their statement that the maintained drivers are contractors and are not employees and, has refused to recognize the union.
The Teamsters said Amazon has illegally refused to recognize their union or negotiate a contract. Amazon gave a reply to this on Wednesday saying:
“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. The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union.”
Amazon workers on the picket line in Skokie completly denied the company’s accusations.
“Amazon will refuse to negotiate with us, they will refuse to recognize us, they will refuse to work with us, even though we’re the ones who work for them every single day and deliver hundreds of thousands of packages all across this country,” Amazon delivery driver Luke Cianciotto said. “We have people who work here alongside my coworkers. Many of us, we don’t have any Christmas presents under the tree this year, because the wages, the hours that we get working for Amazon just simply aren’t enough to get by in today’s economy.”
Additionally, the union said Teamsters President Sean O’Brien would join striking members at a facility in the City of Industry, California, on Friday for the 2nd day of the strike. For more such updates keep Reading Questiqa.com
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