After years of Amazon workers organizing and pressuring the company to negotiate wages and working conditions, two prominent unions are joining together to challenge the online retailer.
The partnership was finalized in a vote that ended Monday after members of the Amazon Labor Union, the only union that officially represents Amazon warehouse workers in the United States, overwhelmingly voted to join the 1.3 million-member union International Brotherhood of Teamsters had voted. The vote was monitored by the Amazon union.
The ALU won a surprise victory in a 2022 election at a warehouse on Staten Island. However, it has not yet begun negotiations with Amazon, which continues to contest the election results. Leaders of both unions said the affiliation agreement would put them in a better position to challenge Amazon and provide the ALU with more money and staff support.
“Teamsters and ALU will fight fearlessly to ensure that Amazon workers get the good jobs and safe working conditions they deserve in a union contract,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement early Tuesday.
Amazon declined to comment on the connection.
The Teamsters are increasing their efforts to organize Amazon workers nationwide. The union voted to create an Amazon division in 2021, and Mr. O’Brien was elected this year, in part with the goal of making progress at the company.
According to Christian Smalls, the ALU president, the Teamsters told the ALU that they had committed $8 million to support organizing at Amazon and that the larger union was prepared to donate its strike and defense funds of more than $300 to commit millions of dollars to support the effort. The Teamsters did not comment on their budget for organizing at Amazon.
The Teamsters also recently entered into a partnership agreement with workers organizing at Amazon’s largest aviation hub in the United States, a facility in Kentucky called KCVG. Experts say unionizing KCVG could give workers significant leverage since Amazon relies heavily on the hub to meet its one- and two-day shipping goals.
David Levin, human resources director for Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a reform group within the union that helped mobilize workers in United Parcel Service’s successful collective bargaining campaign last year, said many Teamsters members who had put pressure on UPS are now would help Amazon workers organize.
“Labor leaders and activists are emerging from the UPS contract campaign and engaging in building volunteer organizing committees at Amazon,” Levin said.
Efforts to unionize Amazon over the last decade have been spread across a variety of established unions and independent worker groups. Some experts argue that, given the company’s size and longstanding opposition to unions, establishing a significant union presence there would require some organizational consolidation.
“We’ve had these different efforts, all these different areas, that have led to some important breakthroughs,” said Barry Eidlin, a sociologist at McGill University in Montreal who studies labor. “But they also showed the limits of a diffuse approach.”
The partnership agreement with the Teamsters, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times, provides that the ALU within the Teamsters has the exclusive right to organize additional Amazon warehouse workers in New York City and promises to provide the new district to assist with organizing, research, communications and legal representation.
It also gives the ALU a role in the Teamsters’ broader Amazon organization, saying that at least three members of the chapter will participate in “leadership planning and strategy discussions” of the Teamsters’ Amazon division and that the chapter “will make its resources available “. Expertise to help organize other Amazon facilities across the country.
With its victory in 2022, the ALU revitalized the labor movement, but it soon faced major challenges. A few weeks later, she lost a union election at a nearby warehouse on Staten Island and another election that fall at a warehouse near Albany, NY.
After the second defeat, the union began to disintegrate, and several ALU organizers expressed concerns that union leaders had too much power and were unaccountable to members. Mr. Smalls claimed that the union was employee-led.
An ALU dissident group critical of Mr. Smalls filed a lawsuit in 2023 to force a leadership election. The two sides announced an agreement in January and elections are scheduled for the summer, overseen by an observer approved by a federal court. Mr. Smalls is not a candidate, while the dissident group ALU Democratic Reform Caucus is fielding candidates for all four leadership positions. The list is led by Connor Spence, an ALU founder.
Meanwhile, ALU faced financial difficulties, ending last year with $33,000 in assets and $81,000 in liabilities, federal records show.
In May, both ALU factions visited Teamsters headquarters in Washington, where Teamsters officials introduced them to the idea of membership, Mr. Smalls said.
He said the Teamsters had offered to make their resources – including strike pay – available to Amazon workers while largely preserving the independence of the Amazon union. He signed the accession treaty at the beginning of June.
The signing surprised the Reform Caucus, which had told the Teamsters that ALU members would need more time to deliberate. But the caucus ultimately decided to support the accession as long as ALU members ratified it, saying it would help “transform the beachhead we have secured in Staten Island into a militant, autonomous local.”
Mr. Spence, the Reform Caucus candidate for ALU president, said that if his group won the leadership election on Staten Island, it would, in consultation with workers, develop a plan to take action against Amazon and the plan Teamsters put forward the necessary resources in the hope of success.
Amazon fired Mr. Spence last fall for alleged violations of its policies on off-duty access to its facilities. He is challenging the firing in a case before a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge.
Mr. Spence and another fired Amazon employee were fired by police last week after they showed up outside the warehouse and tried to persuade workers to ratify the accession agreement. The officers handcuffed the two former workers, took them to a train station and gave them tickets to appear in court.
Lisa Levandowski, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the company called police because a group of mostly Teamsters was causing a disturbance outside the warehouse and rejected Amazon’s request to leave. She said that after police arrived, everyone left except Mr. Spence and his former colleague. (Employees are permitted to distribute materials outside the building during non-business hours.)
Mr Spence said he had appeared outside the building many times in recent weeks for organizing purposes without encountering police.
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2024-06-18 09:03:15
www.nytimes.com
