Staff 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 opportunity of a strike throughout considered one of Amazon’s busiest occasions of the yr.
Teamsters basic 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 staff at its Staten Island (JFK8) achievement middle. Supply drivers at a Queens (DBK4) last-mile supply station additionally voted to authorize a strike.
“That is my third vacation I’m giving to Amazon,” a employee named James stated in a video printed Friday by labor nonprofit Extra Excellent 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 printed US Senate Committee report says that, based mostly on an investigation of Amazon’s data, the corporate’s warehouse harm charges had been “greater than 1.8 occasions that of different firms in every of the previous seven years,” in accordance with The New York Occasions. Senator Bernie Sanders, who chairs the committee, stated “Amazon’s executives repeatedly selected to place income forward of the well being and security of its staff by ignoring suggestions that may considerably scale back accidents.”
In an announcement emailed to The Verge, Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards accused the Teamsters union of “deliberately” deceptive claims that it represents hundreds of Amazon workers and drivers.
They don’t, and that is one other try to push a false narrative. The reality is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and tried to coerce Amazon workers and third-party drivers to affix them, which is illegitimate and is the topic of a number of pending unfair labor follow expenses in opposition to the union.
Hards didn’t instantly reply after we requested which expenses she was referring to. Conversely, in 2022, the Nationwide Labor Relations Board alleged that Amazon itself “repeatedly broke the regulation by threatening, surveilling, and interrogating” Staten Island staff who had been trying to unionize.
Staff 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 figuring out 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 Fb web page, or its website.
