Amazon Faces Strike Action In US Ahead Of Christmas

Amazon workers are set to go on strike in the US days before Christmas, after members of the Teamsters union voted to support industrial action over contract negotiations.

Teamsters, one of the US’ largest labour unions, said workers at the DIL7 delivery hub in Skokie, Illinois, had voted in favour of action, joining workers at Staten Island JFK8 and Queens DBK4 in New York City, which had earlier authorised strikes.

The JFK8 warehouse was the first Amazon warehouse in the US to win a union election in 2022.

The company’s locations in Southern California could also be affected, according to a Teamsters statement.

Strike action

Teamsters local 299 in Detroit announced strike shifts on 19 and 20 December in a now-deleted Facebook post, while a flyer from Teamsters local 206 in Portland, Oregon announced a picket at an Amazon warehouse on Thursday and Friday, the Guardian reported.

Workers at two Amazon facilities outside Atlanta have also threatened to strike.

Teamsters, which represents a total of 1.3 million people in the US, Puerto Rico and Canada, said it gave Amazon a deadline of 15 December to begin negotiations over a contract.

“Amazon chose to ignore that deadline and is pushing workers across the country closer to launching a strike that could disrupt operations for customers at the height of the holiday season,” the union said.

Amazon said Teamsters does not represent “thousands” of Amazon workers as it claims.

“The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union,” the company said in a statement.

Safety allegations

A report from the US Senate this week found that Amazon on at least two occasions decided against implementing warehouse worker safety measures recommended by internal research due to concerns it could affect productivity.

The report, the result of an investigation launched in June 2023 by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension, or HELP, committee, cited internal studies from 2020 and 2021 that it said never led to action by the company.

The committee found that Amazon workplaces recorded 30 percent more injuries in 2023 than the warehousing industry average.

Amazon said the report was “wrong on the facts” and relied on “out-of-date documents and unverifiable anecdotes to create a preconceived narrative”.