Amazon’s NYC warehouse workers poised to strike as holiday crunch in Big Apple looms
Amazon workers at two warehouses in New York City — both of them crucial for delivering holiday goods throughout the Big Apple — signaled they are poised to strike if the e-commerce giant doesn’t agree to a timetable for contract negotiations.
The Teamsters union represents Amazon workers at a Staten Island fulfillment center known as JFK8 that employs 5,500 workers, as well as a last-mile delivery station in Queens known as DBK4.
Workers at both facilities voted on Friday to authorize a strike if a Sunday negotiation deadline passed without a resolution, according a Dec. 14 post by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The Teamsters have not released a statement since the Sunday deadline passed and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Amazon Teamsters at two New York City facilities — JFK8 and DBK4 — have voted overwhelmingly to authorize strikes following Amazon’s illegal refusal to recognize their union and negotiate a contract addressing the company’s low wages and dangerous working conditions,” Teamsters wrote on X on Friday.
Amazon claims the union does not represent the “thousands” of employees and drivers it says it does.
“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,” Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards said in a statement.
The Teamsters has been trying to organize Amazon nationwide and says it has infiltrated 10 facilities altogether.
Teamsters president Sean O’Brien added, “We’ve been clear: Amazon has until December 15 to come to the table and bargain for a contract. If these white-collar criminals want to keep breaking the law, they better get ready for a fight.”
Meanwhile, a scathing congressional report into worker safety issues at Amazon was released on Sunday.
The congressional investigation — spearheaded by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — found that injuries at Amazon facilities were 30% higher in 2023 than the industry average for all such workplaces.
The 160-page report also found that Amazon allegedly “cherry-picks” and “manipulates” its own data to make its warehouses appear safer than they are.
Amazon employees are pressured to work at an “extremely fast and often dangerous pace,” according to the report.
The online giant also denied the congressional report’s findings in a 2,394-word response insisting that the report and Sanders are “wrong on the facts” and relied on “outdated information that lacks context and isn’t grounded in reality.”
Amazon says it has increased delivery speeds while decreasing injury rates, adding that it cooperated with the committee members as they conducted research.
The HELP committee said it interviewed more than 130 Amazon workers and met with nearly 500 employees who shared 1,400 documents with the legislators.
Amazon, meanwhile, only produced one quarter of the documents — or 285 files — the committee requested over the 18-month investigation, according to the report even as Amazon says it “produced thousands” of documents for the committee members.
The report claims Amazon managers bark orders at workers, including to “keep the line moving at all costs,” according to the report, including an incident in which a woman “passed out” by the conveyor belt and the manager never hit the “Stop” button.
The report’s findings echo other state and federal allegations about Amazon’s difficult work environment, including one by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration, which filed a complaint in 2022 alleging that pregnant women and disabled workers are subjected to harsh physical work conditions that make them vulnerable to injuries.
In 2021, Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos wrote a letter to shareholders as he was stepping down from the helm, promising that Amazon would be “the best employer” and the “safest place to work.”
Bezos’ letter followed a bruising, high-profile, failed attempt to organize an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala.
