They drive massive vehicles emblazoned with “Amazon” and put on Amazon uniforms. However are they Amazon workers?
That’s the query central to a dispute over the Worldwide Brotherhood of Teamsters’ makes an attempt to arrange the drivers who ship Amazon packages in California, Illinois, and New York.
Final yr, 84 Amazon supply drivers from Palmdale, California, grew to become the primary U.S. group to affix the Teamsters. Since then, drivers in Skokie, Illinois, the New York Metropolis borough of Queens, and Victorville, California, have achieved the identical.
However right here’s the factor: Amazon doesn’t signal the drivers’ paychecks. They work for Amazon’s large Supply Service Associate (DSP) community. The DSPs are impartial corporations began underneath an Amazon program that enables aspiring enterprise homeowners to arrange store for as little as $10,000. The DSPs make use of drivers who function the DSPs’ vehicles, that are typically leased by means of third-party corporations Amazon approves.
Due to that, Amazon says DSP drivers aren’t its workers. The union alleges that Amazon is a co-employer of the drivers and accuses the ecommerce behemoth of utilizing its DSP program to dodge duty. To this point, regional Nationwide Labor Relations Board officers have sided with the Teamsters. NLRB’s Area 31 issued a criticism towards Amazon dated September 30.
Nevertheless, the state of affairs is way from settled, as the difficulty stays pending by means of the NLRB course of and the courts. An NLRB administrative regulation choose set a listening to on the regional criticism for March 25, 2025.
Dangerous for Amazon Sellers?
Ought to the union be victorious, Amazon would virtually definitely cross alongside elevated prices by elevating charges it prices platform sellers, says Phil Masiello, CEO of CrunchGrowth Income Acceleration Company and a longtime Amazon vendor and founding father of a number of ecommerce corporations. However, he added, Amazon received’t simply give in.
“The lengthy and wanting it’s you’ll be able to have a look at what occurred in New York and different areas. Amazon will completely combat it,” Masiello says.
Teamsters Place
A Teamsters spokesperson didn’t reply to requests for remark. Nevertheless, in information releases, the union accuses Amazon of utilizing the DSP construction to evade its obligations whereas “exercising whole management over the wages, office circumstances, and security requirements of the drivers.”
In a launch issued on October 2, Sean M. O’Brien, Teamsters common president, mentioned the NLRB criticism “brings us one step nearer to getting Amazon employees the pay, working circumstances, and contracts they deserve. Amazon has no alternative however to fulfill us on the negotiating desk.”
The union and its allies have utilized political stress on Amazon.
On October 18, 133 U.S. Home of Representatives members, led by the Congressional Labor Caucus, issued a letter asking Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to offer details about “illegal violations of the Nationwide Labor Relations Act.”
“We’re deeply troubled by ongoing stories that Amazon could also be unlawfully coercing, intimidating, and retaliating towards employees concerned in union organizing exercise,” the letter mentioned.
The letter then asks Jassy to answer six questions associated to union organizing efforts by direct Amazon employees and people employed by DSP operators.
What Amazon Says
In an e-mail to Sensible Ecommerce, Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards mentioned the NLRB criticism “makes clear that the Teamsters have been misrepresenting the info right here for over 15 months, which is why the NLRB has not included most of their bigger allegations.”
“As we’ve mentioned all alongside, there isn’t a advantage to any of their claims. We look ahead to exhibiting that, because the authorized course of continues, and anticipate the few remaining allegations will likely be dismissed as effectively,” Hards mentioned, including that Amazon is just not inherently against unionization.
“Our workers have the selection of whether or not or to not be a part of a union. They all the time have,” she mentioned within the e-mail. “We favor alternatives for every particular person to be revered and valued as a person and to have their distinctive voice heard by working straight with our workforce. The actual fact is, Amazon already gives what many unions are requesting: aggressive pay, well being advantages on day one, and alternatives for profession development. We look ahead to working straight with our workforce to proceed making Amazon an ideal place to work.”
Amazon says its DSP community consists of 4,400 enterprise homeowners who make use of 390,000 drivers and generate a mixed $58 billion in income — roughly the identical as Delta Airways’ fiscal 2023 working income.
Amazon’s turbulent relationship with the Teamsters goes past organizing efforts by DSP drivers. In 2022, Amazon employees on the JFK8 Achievement Heart on Staten Island, New York, fashioned the Amazon Labor Union (ALU). The ALU affiliated with the Teamsters earlier this yr, turning into the ALU-IBT.
Based in 1903, the Teamsters signify 1.3 million individuals within the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico.