Teamsters to step up efforts to unionize Amazon workers

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a union that represents 1.4 million delivery workers, is setting its sights on Amazon.

On Thursday, it'll vote on whether to create organizing Amazon personnel its main priority. The Teamsters accuse the nation’s second-largest private employer of exploiting employees by paying them low wages, pushing them to just work at fast speeds and offering no job security.

“There is absolutely no clearer example of how America is failing the working class than Amazon,” says the resolution that'll be voted on by representatives from 500 Teamsters local unions Thursday.

The resolution is likely to be approved and allows the Teamsters to “fully fund and support" efforts to unionize Amazon workers and create a division to aid them and “protect the standards inside our industries from the existential threat that's Amazon.” It declined to state how much money it'll devote to the efforts.

Any try to unionize Amazon may very well be an uphill battle. None has prevailed in the company’s 26-year history, like the latest one at an Alabama warehouse where personnel overwhelmingly voted against joining a union.

But the Teamsters said it will get one of these different strategy. Randy Korgan, the Teamsters’ National Director for Amazon, wrote in Salon earlier this month that unionizing one facility at the same time doesn’t work because companies like Amazon have the funds and legal resources to squash those efforts from the within. Instead, Korgan wrote that organizing Amazon personnel will need “shop-floor militancy,” such as for example strikes in warehouses and in city streets.

Amazon didn’t respond to a request for touch upon Wednesday.

The web shopping behemoth had pushed hard against unionizing efforts at the warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Amazon argued that it paid employees at least $15 one hour and already offered the benefits unions want. It hung anti-union signs throughout the warehouse, including inside bathroom stalls, and held mandatory meetings to convince employees why the union is a bad idea, according to 1 worker who testified at a Senate hearing.

When the votes were counted in April, practically 71% of the more than 2,500 valid votes counted rejected a union.

The organizing in Bessemer was led by the New York-based Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which represents 100,000 personnel at poultry plants; cereal and soda bottling facilities; and retailers such as for example Macy’s and H&M.

The Teamsters is a lot larger. The union has been around since the early 1900s when goods were delivered by horse-drawn wagons. It now represents 1.4 million truckers, UPS employees and other styles of workers, including nurses and warehouse mechanics.

“They’re a strong, successful union,” said Alex Colvin, the dean of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, who added the Amazon staff reflect the type of members it already represents. “They’re a formidable adversary for Amazon to handle."

The Teamsters is targeting personnel in Amazon's fast-growing delivery network, such as drivers and warehouse staff who pack and ship orders. In the past year or two, Seattle-based Amazon has been working to deliver most of its packages itself and rely less on UPS, the U.S. Postal Service and other carriers.

It has generated several package-sorting hubs at airports, opened warehouses nearer to where shoppers live and launched an application that lets contractors start businesses delivering packages in vans stamped with the Amazon logo. In January, it bought 11 jets that it plans to use to provide orders to shoppers faster.

The Teamsters said in its resolution that Amazon's delivery network has become a dominate force in the logistics industry in a brief timeframe and just how it treats employees could threaten the working standards it has set at UPS and at other parcel, freight and delivery companies.