Days before Christmas, amid a national rush to deliver holiday packages, thousands of Amazon workers began a strike in four states.
Amazon, according to CNN, said the strike will not affect holiday deliveries at seven Teamsters union facilities in Queens, Skokie, Illinois near Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco, Victorville and the City of Industry, Calif.
Workers at the Queens facility were the first to strike at 6 a.m. ET on Thursday over wages and benefits.
However, also at issue for workers is that Amazon does not consider them Amazon employees. Teamsters claim to represent 7,000 Amazon employees across the U.S., which is less than 1 percent of America‘s workforce.
“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,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien posted on X.
According to Amazon driver Luke Cianciotto, who spoke to media outside the Skokie facility before the strike began, workers are “struggling and fighting for basic benefits and needs that are otherwise an industry standard. Many of us, we don’t have any Christmas presents under the tree this year. The wages and hours we get working for Amazon simply aren’t enough to get by in today’s economy.”
The National Labor Relations Board certified only one group of workers at Amazon as part of the Teamsters union and they work at the Staten Island, New York facility, which is not on strike.
“There are a lot of nuances here but I want to be clear, the Teamsters don’t represent any Amazon employees despite their claims to the contrary,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement to CNN. “This entire narrative is a PR play and the Teamsters’ conduct this past year, and this week is illegal.”
Satish Jindel, president of ShipMatrix, a software provider that tracks on-time delivery data, said the strike will have a minor impact and is similar to when an ice storm hits a region of the country.
“They will have the ability to ship product from other locations. They won’t be shutdown. Some packages that might have taken one day to be delivered will now take two. Some that might have taken two days will take three. But it won’t be that many,” Jindel said.
The difference between an ice storm and a strike, however, Jindel said, is that an ice storm ends. The feelings from a strike could linger.
In the first nine months of 2024, Amazon reported a net income of $39.2 billion, which is more than double for the same period in 2023. So far in 2024, Amazon’s net income has been $450.2 billion. The 2024 revenue makes Amazon the second largest private company in the world after Walmart.
“It’s no longer going to be packages over people, profit over people. It’s people over packages, people over profits,” Skokie driver Ash’shura Brooks said.
The strike of Amazon workers follows a labor striking trend in the last few years in the U.S., including Hollywood writers, Boeing machinists, employees at the Big Three automakers, port workers on the East Coast and Gulf Coast, and Kaiser Permanente employees.
Brooks and Cianciotto said they are Amazon employees, although they are employed by a third-party contractor. Brooks said Amazon‘s claim is “heartbreaking… for Amazon to tell us we’re not Amazon drivers, when we wear Amazon vests and deliver in Amazon vans.”
Cianciotto said third party contractors is just a way for Amazon not to take responsibility to negotiate.
“These third-party contractors don’t exist without Amazon,” he said.
Teamsters reported Friday that the strike had expanded to 199 facilities across the country, but that work stoppage by drivers was not part of the strike.
“What you see here are 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. 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,” Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hand said.
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Rebecca Barnabi
