Amazon Drivers in Queens Are Joining the Teamsters
Yesterday hundreds of Amazon drivers at a delivery station in Queens, New York, announced they are unionizing with the Teamsters. It’s evidence of growing momentum for the Teamsters’ effort to unionize Amazon, now the largest private parcel carrier in the US.
While Amazon’s union busting follows a pattern, so does the organizing among its workers lately: join the Teamsters. (Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images)
Hundreds of Amazon drivers at a delivery station in Queens, New York, marched on their bosses today to announce they are joining the Teamsters. They are demanding the logistics giant recognize their union and negotiate a contract.
“To march today and walk in there with everyone behind us, all of us standing together as a union, it was so amazing,” said Latrice Shadae Johnson, who earns $20 an hour delivering packages for Amazon, where she has worked as a driver since last November.
What about Amazon’s managers? “They weren’t expecting it at all,” she said. “So when we walked in, they ran scared into a little hole, like a little corner that they could go around and they couldn’t be seen in. But we ran into the hole too!”
“They had no choice but to hear us,” she said. Workers followed the managers with phone cameras recording and papers in hand, surrounding them from all sides: “We were screaming and shouting out to let them know, we are here, and we want to be heard.”
More managers in orange vests came, “and they felt more at ease,” she said. Workers gave little speeches demanding recognition and sharing their workplace concerns, but the mood was so rowdy that workers overcome with the excitement were talking over each other, until they settled down and people took turns speaking.
This was the moment that Johnson and her coworkers had been organizing toward. They had planned for this march on the boss for months. Johnson said she drew strength from the indignation she’s suffered over the past year, from having to alternate from ambling to houses to galumphing up building stairs toting heavy packages alone because understaffing meant no one was coming to her aid if she requested support — a “rescue” in Amazon corporate lingo.
She recalled driving in a van reeking of stale urine because the back was strewn with piss bottles, a daily reminder that Amazon’s punishing delivery metrics leave little time to use the bathroom.
As she stood there with her coworkers, she also thought of her nine-year-old daughter. “When she first started school, I told her, ‘When you are dealing with something that you feel isn’t right, totally speak up on it. Don’t ever, ever, ever, ever, just stay quiet, even if you’re scared to stand up and fight, and I showed her that. I let her know about this little mission that I am on with the union and Teamsters and everything.”
Proliferating Contractors
The drivers are part of Amazon’s 4,400 delivery service partners (DSPs) program—meaning they are nominally employed by contractors, even while Amazon retains full control.
These delivery drivers in Queens are employed by three separate DSPs. Through DSPs, Amazon says it employs 390,000 drivers. That’s roughly the same size workforce as Teamsters at UPS.
Amazon surpassed UPS in the parcel business in April. It has 695 delivery stations and 577 warehouses, including airport hubs, in the United States, according to the latest figures from the logistics supply-chain firm MWPVL International.
The drivers who took action today operate out of delivery station DB4K, where the warehouse workers have also been organizing for years through a loose network of committees known as Amazonians United.
National Momentum
In July, Amazon warehouse workers at DB4K were key leaders in organizing petition drives across five warehouses, including another delivery station in the Bronx. Delivery stations are where packages are put into delivery vehicles and dispatched to mailboxes or doorsteps.
Six hundred workers signed the petitions, demanding starting wages of $25 an hour, time-and-a-half pay for July’s Prime Day (July 16–17), seasonal workers converted to permanent status within thirty days of employment, and Juneteenth as a paid holiday.
The news also comes after National Labor Relations Board regional directors in Georgia and California have found Amazon and two of its DSP contractors are joint employers, following investigations into unfair labor practice violations. At Atlanta’s delivery DAT6 facility, the Labor Board found merit in union allegations that Amazon surveilled employees and made coercive statements, including threatening to close the DSP MJB Logistics if workers unionized with the Teamsters.
Last April, Amazon drivers at a facility in Palmdale, California, became the first to win recognition of a union at a DSP; one called Battle-Tested Strategies negotiated and ratified a contract with Teamsters Local 396.
Next Amazon drivers organized in Skokie, Illinois. They had already reached majority support on union cards when Amazon terminated its contract with the DSP, Four Star Express Delivery. They went on strike in June, alleging that Amazon was violating labor law by failing to recognize and bargain with their union.
“Amazon can no longer dodge responsibility for our low wages and dangerous working conditions, and it cannot continue to get away with committing unfair labor practices. We are Amazon workers, and we are holding Amazon accountable,” said Jessie Moreno, an Amazon driver and Local 396 member in Palmdale.
“We have been on strike to stop Amazon’s lawbreaking, and we are winning at the NLRB, while we are uniting Amazon workers across the country like never before.”
“Sticking Together, Staying Motivated”
As the Teamsters organizing momentum spreads, Amazon is hiking wages for drivers. The company announced this month that wages will go up to $22 an hour from $20.50. Overall the company is investing $2 billion in the DSP program. That’s on top of $12.3 billion over the last six years, signaling how important its contracted workforce is to Amazon’s bottom line.
The first effort to organize at a DSP was a victory-in-defeat story that set the pattern: in 2017, forty-six workers at the Amazon DSP Silverstar Delivery, in Downriver Detroit, unionized with Teamsters Local 337 — and the company soon after closed down.
The Teamsters are better organized today, after launching in 2021 a division to support organizing at Amazon. The union now represents the only unionized Amazon warehouse in the United States — after workers at the hulking JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island, New York, who formed the independent Amazon Labor Union two years ago, voted in June to affiliate with the Teamsters. Officer elections there in July put new leaders at the helm.
Workers at Amazon’s San Bernardino air hub KSBD in Southern California have been organizing to beat back management retaliation and win protection from heat-related illness. Workers there are members of the independent Inland Empire Amazon Workers United.
And workers at Amazon’s air hub KCVG in northern Kentucky, part of another independent union, voted to join the Teamsters in April — after DHL workers next door in the same airport unionized and ratified a lucrative Teamster contract — and struck in July. While Amazon’s union busting follows a pattern, so does the organizing among its workers lately: join the Teamsters.
“What it’s going to take is us sticking together, staying motivated,” said Johnson. “Amazon workers out there, just keep doing what y’all do. We’re a team. We are a union.”