In what they say is the biggest strike against the delivery behemoth in history, the Teamsters union announced a walkout against Amazon on Thursday morning, with workers forming picket lines in four states.
Amidst the flurry of last-minute holiday present deliveries, the strike occurs just one week before Christmas.
Workers at a factory in New York City, another in Atlanta, three in Southern California, one in San Francisco, and one in Skokie, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, went on strike Thursday at 6 a.m. ET.
Amazon employees at the Staten Island, New York, warehouse said on Friday that they would join the walkout on Saturday at midnight.
Nearly 10,000 Amazon employees have joined the Teamsters, the union announced in a news release on Thursday. The $2 trillion tech and retail conglomerate employs 1.5 million people, of whom that is only a small portion.
In the statement, the union claimed that Amazon disregarded the Sunday deadline it had set for attending the negotiating table.
You can hold Amazon accountable for its unquenchable greed if your package is delayed over the holidays. We set a firm deadline for Amazon to attend the meeting and treat our members fairly. According to a statement from Teamsters General President Sean O. Brien, they disregarded it.
These avaricious executives have every opportunity to be decent and respectful of those who enable their heinous riches. Instead, they are now paying the price for pushing workers to the limit. He went on to say, “This strike is on them.”
Amazon denied the union’s assertions.
The Teamsters have been purposefully misleading the public for over a year by claiming to speak for thousands of Amazon drivers and staff. According to a statement from Amazon spokesman Kelly Nantel, they don’t, and this is just another effort to spread a misleading story.
According to Nantel, the Teamsters have attempted to intimidate and pressure third-party drivers and Amazon workers to join them, which is against the law and the focus of several pending unfair labor practice lawsuits against the union.
Amazon stated that its workers are free to join a union if they so choose and that it currently provides competitive compensation, health benefits, and career advancement opportunities—all of which are demands made by numerous unions.
Only over half of the 50 protesters who showed up at the fulfillment center in City of Industry, east of Los Angeles, on Thursday were dressed in Amazon uniforms. Teamsters members were present to provide support.
Every individual NBC News contacted with who claimed to be employed by Amazon stated that they are drivers who are employed by outside companies under contract with Amazon.
However, they claimed that they view themselves as Amazon employees since, in the words of delivery driver Alfred Munoz, they have authority over our routes. The number of packages we deliver is at their control.
Munoz added that they must wear the Amazon uniforms as required by the firm.
Julio Fuentes, another delivery driver, stated that he makes 200 stops and travels roughly 200 miles every day.
He said, “It’s just way too much.”
At the height of the day, nearly all of the about 25 protesters in Alpharetta, Georgia, claimed to be Amazon workers. Two members of an unaffiliated union and representatives from UPS Teamsters were also there.
About ten employees who were interviewed by NBC News all identified themselves as delivery drivers who would have been on duty on Thursday. They said that each of them worked for a third party.
A request for confirmation of the number of striking employees in Georgia was not immediately answered by the Teamsters.
About 50 to 60 of the 1,000 drivers who are routinely dispatched from the Alpharetta station, according to the demonstrators, are members of the union.
Some workers stated that they believed they were risking their lives delivering goods and should be appropriately compensated for it, while many others were evasive when asked what their expectations were for improved working conditions and increased compensation.
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