Amazon Teamsters in NYC have voted to authorize a strike

Workers at a Staten Island, New York Amazon warehouse voted on Friday to authorize a strike if the corporate doesn’t conform to set dates for contract negotiations. The employees are asking Amazon to acknowledge the union and discount for safer working circumstances and higher wages, threatening the potential of a strike throughout one in all Amazon’s busiest occasions of the yr.

Teamsters normal president Sean O’Brien says in a press launch that Amazon should conform to bargaining dates by December fifteenth, which handed yesterday. If Amazon hasn’t agreed, it dangers going through a strike by the greater than 5,500 employees at its Staten Island (JFK8) achievement heart. Delivery drivers at a Queens (DBK4) last-mile supply station additionally voted to authorize a strike.

“This is my third vacation I’m giving to Amazon,” a employee named James stated in a video revealed Friday by labor nonprofit More Perfect Union. “I haven’t been round for Thanksgiving or Christmas. It’s fixed speed-up for the vacations. It’s like twice as harmful, I might say.”

A newly revealed US Senate Committee report says that, based mostly on an investigation of Amazon’s data, the corporate’s warehouse damage charges have been “greater than 1.8 occasions that of different corporations in every of the previous seven years,” in keeping with The New York Times. Senator Bernie Sanders, who chairs the committee, stated “Amazon’s executives repeatedly selected to place earnings forward of the well being and security of its employees by ignoring suggestions that might considerably scale back accidents.”

In a press release emailed to The Verge, Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards accused the Teamsters union of “deliberately” deceptive claims that it represents 1000’s of Amazon staff and drivers.

They don’t, and that is one other try to push a false narrative. The fact is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and tried to coerce Amazon staff and third-party drivers to affix them, which is against the law and is the topic of a number of pending unfair labor apply prices in opposition to the union.

Hards didn’t instantly reply once we requested which prices she was referring to. Conversely, in 2022, the National Labor Relations Board alleged that Amazon itself “repeatedly broke the regulation by threatening, surveilling, and interrogating” Staten Island employees who have been trying to unionize.

Workers on the Staten Island warehouse voted to unionize in 2022 and joined Teamsters, one of many largest US labor unions, in June, adopted by drivers understanding of the Queens facility in September. Amazon hasn’t acknowledged these unions. As of this writing, the Teamsters hasn’t introduced an energetic strike on its X account, its Facebook web page, or its website.