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New York Amazon Delivery Drivers Join The Teamsters In Surge Of Momentum

September 17, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Hundreds of Amazon drivers at a delivery station in Queens, New York, marched on their bosses today to announce they are joining the Teamsters. They are demanding the logistics giant recognize their union and negotiate a contract. “To march today and walk in there with everyone behind us, all of us standing together as a union, it was so amazing,” said Latrice Shadae Johnson, who earns $20 an hour delivering packages for Amazon, where she has worked as a driver since last November. What about Amazon’s managers? “They weren’t expecting it at all,” she said. “So when we walked in, they ran scared into a little hole, like a little corner that they could go around and they couldn’t be seen in. But we ran into the hole too!

Reflections From An Amazon Warehouse Worker On Prime Day

August 30, 2024 Pola Posen , Left Voice. , , ,
On July 16, fire hydrants were open on every block, and the streets were empty, cleared by the heat wave that swept over New York City that week. Inside the Amazon warehouse where I work, it was just as hot. July 16 and 17 — some of the hottest days recorded on the planet — were also Amazon’s 2024 Prime Days. The brutality of the temperatures was matched by that of the record-breaking profits Amazon made off its workers during the sale, which for customers lasted two days, and for workers, two weeks. Amazon created Prime Day, its own commercial holiday, in 2015. The holiday reflects Amazon’s global ascendency and the increasing centrality of the logistics industry in the United States.

How US Big Tech Monopolies Colonized The World: Welcome To Neo-Feudalism

August 19, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
US Big Tech corporations have essentially colonized the world. In almost every country on Earth, the digital infrastructure upon which the modern economy was built is owned and controlled by a small handful of monopolies, based largely in Silicon Valley. This system is looking more and more like neo-feudalism. Just as the feudal lords of medieval Europe owned all of the land and turned almost everyone else into serfs, who broke their backs producing food for their masters, the US Big Tech monopolies of the 21st century act as corporate feudal lords, controlling all of the digital land upon which the digital economy is based.

Reform Caucus Wins Amazon Labor Union Officer Elections

July 31, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , ,
Amazon workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island, New York, voted to elect reform officers in the first-ever leadership election. “We are extremely excited to announce that every candidate on our reform caucus slate won decisively in our union’s leadership elections,” said Connor Spence, co-founder of the Amazon Labor Union and former treasurer, who won the presidency. “After more than two years of fighting to reform our union to make it more democratic, transparent, and militant, we are relieved to finally be able to turn our full attention toward bringing Amazon to the table and winning an incredible contract.

Will Immigrant Workers In Britain Win Europe’s First Amazon Union?

July 16, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
Workers at fulfillment center BHX4 in Coventry, central England, cast votes July 8-13 for the GMB union to negotiate over pay, hours, and working conditions with the Amazon bosses. The results are expected July 17. The watershed vote comes after a long, bruising battle; Amazon tried U.S.-style stalling and union-busting tactics. Meanwhile the workers have taken 37 days of strike action in two years. They’ve grown their union to 1,400 members, established a stewards network, and built multiethnic solidarity. In the U.K., workers can become dues-paying members before union recognition is attained.

New York Amazon Workers Demand Paid Juneteenth Holiday

July 12, 2024 Kenneth Guy and Dylan Maraj, Labor Notes. , , ,
Six hundred of our Amazon co-workers at five warehouses around New York signed a petition demanding starting wages of $25 an hour, time-and-a-half pay for Prime Day (July 16-17), seasonal workers converted to permanent status within 30 days of employment, and Juneteenth as a paid holiday. The June 19 holiday celebrates the end of slavery in the U.S. and became a federal holiday in 2021—the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was recognized in 1983. We organized petitions across five warehouses: sort center LDJ5 on Staten Island, where packages are routed to local facilities; the massive fulfillment centers JFK8 on Staten Island and SWF1 in the Hudson Valley, where customer orders are packed; and delivery stations DBK4 and DNJ3 in Queens and the Bronx, where packages are put into delivery vehicles and dispatched to mailboxes or doorsteps.

Illinois Amazon Drivers Strike, Demand Union Contract

June 28, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Amazon drivers at the DIL7 delivery station in Skokie, Illinois, struck June 26 over the company’s violations of federal labor laws. A hundred drivers have organized with Teamsters Local 705 and are demanding that Amazon recognize and bargain with their union, after presenting cards signed by a majority of the workforce. They’re nominally employed by a contractor, Four Star Express Delivery. But “every Amazon driver knows who our true employer is,” said driver Luke Cianciotto in a union statement. “We wear their uniforms and drive their trucks.” Four Star Express is one of 2,500 “delivery service partners” that carry out package deliveries while Amazon retains full control.

Amazon Workers Affiliate With The Teamsters, Next Up Electing Officers

June 20, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Amazon Labor Union members voted June 17 to affiliate with the Teamsters. Workers cast 878 ballots at JFK8 Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island, N.Y. The tally broke down to 829 votes in favor of the affiliation and 14 against it; 10 ballots were spoiled. Total turnout was 11 percent out of 8,000 workers. However, workers estimate the workforce has dipped to between 5,000 and 6,000 workers during the off-peak season. A Teamsters statement said the union will now “represent the roughly 5,500 Amazon warehouse workers.” Turnout works out to 16 percent based on that number. “On behalf of the Amazon Labor Union, I’m proud of our members choosing a path to victory. We're now stronger than ever before," said ALU President Chris Smalls in a statement.

Teamsters And Amazon Labor Union Announce Affiliation

June 6, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
The Amazon Labor Union and the Teamsters have signed an affiliation agreement. “Today is an historical day for labor in America as we now combine forces with one of the most powerful unions to take on Amazon together,” wrote ALU President Chris Smalls on Twitter, now called X. “We’re putting Amazon on notice that we are coming!” Smalls and Teamsters President Sean O’Brien signed the agreement on June 3, according to a copy obtained by Labor Notes. The affiliation agreement charters a new local known as Amazon Labor Union No. 1, International Brotherhood of Teamsters (ALU-IBT Local 1) for the five boroughs of New York City.

Data On Economic Insecurity Among Amazon Warehouse Workers

May 20, 2024 Center for Urban Economic Development. , , , , ,
Today, the Center for Urban Economic Development (CUED) at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) released a new report detailing the results of a survey of 1,484 Amazon workers across 451 facilities in 42 states—the largest nationwide study of Amazon workers to date. The report shows that roughly half of Amazon’s frontline warehouse workers are struggling with food and housing insecurity and being able to pay their bills, with one-third relying on different kinds of public assistance programs. “This research indicates just how far the goalposts have shifted. It used to be the case that big, leading firms in the economy provided a path to the middle class and relative economic security,” said Dr. Sanjay Pinto.

Google Fired Us For Protesting Its Complicity In The War On Gaza

April 30, 2024 Mohammad Khatami, Zelda Montes, and Kate Sim, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
Earlier this month, the three of us, along with dozens of our co-workers, took part in a coordinated set of civil resistance actions at Google offices around the United States. Some workers occupied Google’s New York offices. Others occupied the Sunnyvale, California, office of Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud. This protest was an escalation of the ongoing No Tech for Apartheid(NOTA) campaign, which has been demanding for years that Google and Amazon cancel Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion deal that Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services signed with the Israeli military and government in 2021.

Amazon, Wells Fargo Targeted On Day Of Action For Palestine

April 16, 2024 Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot. , , , , , ,
Maple Grove, MN — Pro-Palestine activists blockaded an Amazon distribution center in the northwestern Minneapolis suburb of Maple Grove as part of A15 Action, a global day of action against Israel’s war on Gaza. In a separate action in the Twin Cities, a Wells Fargo Bank branch in South Minneapolis was vandalized and had its windows broken. Starting at 7 a.m. on April 15, dozens of activists blocked all distribution from the Maple Grove Amazon facility for more than two hours, delaying an estimated 100-plus shipping trucks. Four different elements made up the blockade and protest with all four deploying simultaneously.

Our Big Push Was For Union Democracy And A Plan To Win

March 21, 2024 Luigi Morris, Left Voice. , , , ,
In 2022, Amazon workers on Staten Island made history. The JFK8 warehouse in New York voted to unionize, forming the first U.S. union in the company’s history — an independent union known as the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), representing over 8,000 workers. Since then, Amazon has been intransigently refusing to start contract negotiations. Union-busting tactics, such as the persistent firing of pro-union activists, continue at JFK8 and other facilities. Amazon even filed a case arguing that the National Labor Relations Board, the agency that enforces labor law, is “unconstitutional.”

America’s Richest Men Ask The Courts To Make Unions Illegal

February 25, 2024 Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect. , , , , , , , , , ,
Fourscore and seven years ago—1937, to be exact—our fathers on the Supreme Court (well, five of them, which was just enough) brought forth a new nation: New Deal America. In that year, the justices ruled that the most fundamental legislative works of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency—Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)—were constitutional. So said the Court; so said, in the NLRA case, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the decision’s author, who had been the Republican candidate for president in 1916.

You’re A Mean One, Mr. DeJoy

December 29, 2023 Vishal Shankar, Revolving Door Project. , , ,
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – unless you’re a postal worker. Thanks to chronic understaffing and Amazon’s increasing use of the agency’s last-mile delivery service, the mail is piling up at post offices across the country and overwhelming already-overworked USPS employees. And that’s just the stocking stuffer: these Christmastime delays will become the year-round norm, from Janesville to Nashville to Whoville, if real-life Grinch Louis DeJoy gets his way*. As The Guardian’s Michael Sainato reported last week, the Postmaster General is currently implementing a “10-year austerity plan” that would slash working hours at hundreds of post offices and shutter vital postal sorting facilities.
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