Farrukh Abadi and Mariya S.
The NYPD arrested two workers at the Queens delivery station on Thursday (12/19) on the first day of the historic cross-country Amazon strike. Organized by the Teamsters union, the strike so far includes hundreds of Amazon workers across seven warehouses—four in California, and one each in Skokie, Illinois, Atlanta, Georgia, and Queens, NY. Police were also called to the Joliet, IL Amazon warehouse as protesters blocked the entrance to the facility.
In Queens, workers blocked the road to prevent subcontracted drivers, known as delivery service partners (DSPs), from crossing the picket line. One subcontractor stopped his delivery truck to hear out the striking workers, who called on him to join them. The police ordered him to move on before surrounding the truck and arresting him. Workers rushed to his defense, chanting “Let him go” as they tailed after the police, who violently pushed back against the crowd.
After pushing through the picket, police claimed that workers have to let one scab truck through every few minutes. As police began letting more trucks through, one Teamsters organizer continued to picket and was arrested by the police. The NYPD then divided the striking workers and barricaded them, threatening them with mass arrest and allowing the scabs to pass through unimpeded.
After their arrests and release, both workers returned to the picket line.
Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon and second richest person in the world, was dining with President-elect Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida the day before the strike. Bezos’s net worth increased by $7 billion in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory in the electoral circus, and sits today at $237 billion. He has since pledged a $1 million bribe to the president-elects inaugural fund. Earlier this month, Bezos promised to help Trump deregulate, claiming that there is “too much regulation in this country.”
A volunteer with The Worker asked a Queens-based Amazon driver how readers can support their struggle: “Read what’s going on here with the Amazon workers, join the fight, let them come down, help support, you can also join the picket line. It’s also just spreading awareness that Amazon makes billions of dollars a year, and just paying their workers $20 an hour to drive. I deliver more than 250 packages a day.”
How Amazon Workers Unionized
Amazon workers first unionized at the JFK8 Staten Island, NY warehouse as an independent union known as the Amazon Labor Union in 2022. As Amazon refused to recognize and negotiate with the union, Amazon workers elsewhere began to increasingly unionize with the Teamsters, including the original ALU this past summer. Today, JFK8 is the Teamsters’s largest organized Amazon warehouse.
The Teamsters have so far focused their strategy primarily on unionizing third-party delivery drivers, the DSPs, contracted with Amazon. In order to evade responsibility, regulations, and drive down costs, Amazon outsources these drivers to deliver packages from its delivery stations directly to Amazon customers. However, a 2023 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling broadened the definition of a company’s joint-employer status, leading the federal agency to rule in August 2024 that Amazon is a joint employer of the DSPs and therefore required to recognize and negotiate with the union.
Following the ruling, Amazon increased the pay of its drivers in September to stave off unionization efforts. Among the Amazon workers currently on strike, all are subcontracted workers with the exception of the San Francisco warehouse. Amazon has spent over $17 million on union-busting campaigns since unionization efforts picked up in 2022 following successes at the Staten Island warehouse.
Today, the Teamsters claim to represent 10,000 Amazon workers across 10 facilities, a little over 1% of the monopoly’s US warehouse workers. Of these, only a portion are currently on strike. An Amazon driver based in Queens told The Worker, “I feel like we have to continue and keep going, and get all the workers in there to join us because we got power in numbers. Once we slow things down eventually [Amazon] will come to the bargaining table.”
After failing to recognize the union and negotiate, the Teamsters set a Sunday (12/15) deadline for the $2 trillion e-commerce monopoly to come to the bargaining table, before eventually launching their strike on Thursday morning. As part of the contract, workers are demanding higher pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions. According to the Teamsters, the injury rate for Amazon’s DSPs is double the rate of Amazon warehouse workers, which is already 70% higher than the rate at non-Amazon warehouses.
The Teamsters have stated that other unionized Amazon workers, such as Staten Island’s JFK8, “are prepared to join” the strike. In addition to the strike, the Teamsters have said that they put up primary picket lines, or boycotts, at hundreds of Amazon warehouses across the country.
When asked if they have any advice for Amazon workers across the country on strike or planning to unionize, one driver told The Worker: “keep fighting because we’re out here making history because history ain’t gonna make itself. Like you could whine and complain by yourself all you want but until you actually take action we will never see results. Somebody’s got to make Jeff Bezos give up that peso.”
We recommend to our readers to donate to the Amazon Labor Union Teamsters strike fund here.
Photo: Amazon Teamsters picket outside the Queens delivery station on 12/19/2024.
