Amazon employees at two warehouses in New York City — each of them essential for delivering vacation items all through the Big Apple — signaled they’re poised to strike if the e-commerce big doesn’t conform to a timetable for contract negotiations.
The Teamsters union represents Amazon employees at a Staten Island achievement middle often called JFK8 that employs 5,500 employees, in addition to a last-mile supply station in Queens often called DBK4.
Workers at each amenities voted on Friday to authorize a strike if a Sunday negotiation deadline handed with out a decision, in accordance a Dec. 14 submit by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The Teamsters haven’t launched an announcement because the Sunday deadline handed and didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
“Amazon Teamsters at two New York City amenities — JFK8 and DBK4 — have voted overwhelmingly to authorize strikes following Amazon’s unlawful refusal to acknowledge their union and negotiate a contract addressing the corporate’s low wages and harmful working situations,” Teamsters wrote on X on Friday.
Amazon claims the union doesn’t signify the “1000’s” of workers and drivers it says it does.
“The fact is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and tried to coerce Amazon workers and third-party drivers to affix them, which is against the law and is the topic of a number of pending unfair labor follow costs towards the union,” Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards mentioned in an announcement.
The Teamsters has been attempting to prepare Amazon nationwide and says it has infiltrated 10 amenities altogether.
Teamsters president Sean O’Brien added, “We’ve been clear: Amazon has till December 15 to come back to the desk and discount for a contract. If these white-collar criminals wish to maintain breaking the legislation, they higher prepare for a battle.”
Meanwhile, a scathing congressional report into employee issues of safety at Amazon was launched on Sunday.
The congressional investigation — spearheaded by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — discovered that accidents at Amazon amenities have been 30% increased in 2023 than the trade common for all such workplaces.
The 160-page report additionally discovered that Amazon allegedly “cherry-picks” and “manipulates” its personal knowledge to make its warehouses seem safer than they’re.
Amazon workers are pressured to work at an “extraordinarily quick and sometimes harmful tempo,” based on the report.
The on-line big additionally denied the congressional report’s findings in a 2,394-word response insisting that the report and Sanders are “mistaken on the information” and relied on “outdated data that lacks context and isn’t grounded in actuality.”
Amazon says it has elevated supply speeds whereas reducing damage charges, including that it cooperated with the committee members as they carried out analysis.
The HELP committee mentioned it interviewed greater than 130 Amazon employees and met with almost 500 workers who shared 1,400 paperwork with the legislators.
Amazon, in the meantime, solely produced one quarter of the paperwork — or 285 recordsdata — the committee requested over the 18-month investigation, based on the report whilst Amazon says it “produced 1000’s” of paperwork for the committee members.
The report claims Amazon managers bark orders at employees, together with to “maintain the road shifting in any respect prices,” based on the report, together with an incident through which a lady “handed out” by the conveyor belt and the supervisor by no means hit the “Stop” button.
The report’s findings echo different state and federal allegations about Amazon’s troublesome work setting, together with one by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration, which filed a criticism in 2022 alleging that pregnant girls and disabled employees are subjected to harsh bodily work situations that make them weak to accidents.
In 2021, Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos wrote a letter to shareholders as he was stepping down from the helm, promising that Amazon can be “the very best employer” and the “most secure place to work.”
Bezos’ letter adopted a bruising, high-profile, failed try to prepare an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala.
