They drive giant vehicles emblazoned with “Amazon” and put on Amazon uniforms. However are they Amazon staff?
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 12 months, 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 carried out the identical.
However right here’s the factor: Amazon doesn’t signal the drivers’ paychecks. They work for Amazon’s large Supply Service Accomplice (DSP) community. The DSPs are impartial firms began underneath an Amazon program that enables aspiring enterprise house owners 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 way of third-party firms Amazon approves.
Due to that, Amazon says DSP drivers should not its staff. 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. Thus far, regional Nationwide Labor Relations Board officers have sided with the Teamsters. NLRB’s Area 31 issued a grievance in opposition to Amazon dated September 30.
Nevertheless, the state of affairs is much from settled, as the difficulty stays pending by way of the NLRB course of and the courts. An NLRB administrative legislation decide set a listening to on the regional grievance for March 25, 2025.
Most Amazon supply drivers work for impartial firms inside its Supply Service Accomplice community.
Dangerous for Amazon Sellers?
Ought to the union be victorious, Amazon would nearly actually cross alongside elevated prices by elevating charges it expenses platform sellers, says Phil Masiello, CEO of CrunchGrowth Income Acceleration Company and a longtime Amazon vendor and founding father of a number of ecommerce firms. However, he added, Amazon gained’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 grievance “brings us one step nearer to getting Amazon staff the pay, working circumstances, and contracts they deserve. Amazon has no selection however to satisfy 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 supply details about “illegal violations of the Nationwide Labor Relations Act.”
“We’re deeply troubled by ongoing reviews that Amazon could also be unlawfully coercing, intimidating, and retaliating in opposition to staff 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 staff and people employed by DSP operators.
What Amazon Says
In an e-mail to Sensible Ecommerce, Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards mentioned the NLRB grievance “makes clear that the Teamsters have been misrepresenting the details 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 any benefit to any of their claims. We sit up for displaying that, because the authorized course of continues, and count on the few remaining allegations will likely be dismissed as nicely,” Hards mentioned, including that Amazon isn’t inherently against unionization.
“Our staff have the selection of whether or not or to not be 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 immediately with our crew. The very fact is, Amazon already presents what many unions are requesting: aggressive pay, well being advantages on day one, and alternatives for profession progress. We sit up for working immediately with our crew to proceed making Amazon an awesome place to work.”
Amazon says its DSP community consists of 4,400 enterprise house owners 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 staff on the JFK8 Success Middle on Staten Island, New York, fashioned the Amazon Labor Union (ALU). The ALU affiliated with the Teamsters earlier this 12 months, turning into the ALU-IBT.
Based in 1903, the Teamsters symbolize 1.3 million individuals within the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico.
