Amazon workers voted to authorize strikes at four Southern California logistics facilities, saying the online retail giant has refused to recognize the Teamsters as their union and negotiate a contract.
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Workers who voted to strike are based at distribution and fulfillment hubs in the City of Industry, Palmdale and Victorville, and a sprawling air hub at the San Bernardino International Airport.
Kara Deniz, a spokeswoman with the Teamsters, one of the largest labor unions in the world with over 1.3 million members, refused to say how many workers voted to authorize a strike, or when a strike might happen.
The union said in a Dec. 17 statement that the strike authorization vote came after Amazon ignored a Dec. 15 deadline to recognize the union and negotiate a contract for higher wages and better benefits.
Amazon disputes the union’s count of potentially thousands of workers threatening to strike at the Southern California facilities.
Roughly 1,000 Amazon workers are based at the 660,000-square-foot air hub, Amazon spokeswoman Eileen Hards said Tuesday. Their jobs involve either balancing the weight of a plane with outbound packages or unloading aircraft at the San Bernardino airport. At this time of year, the air hub processes “hundreds of thousands of packages” per day and sends them out via airplanes and trucks as part of a network that fulfills online orders as quickly as possible, she said.
There are “hundreds of workers” at each of the three delivery centers that sort packages in the Inland Empire who ensure that packages get placed on the right delivery vans for delivery across the region, she said.
“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers,’” Hards said. “They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative. 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.”
Hards disputed the union’s account of workers who want to be represented at her company’s San Bernardino air hub. She said those workers have not filed signature cards with the National Labor Relations Board, a required next step needed to vote for unionization.
She also said Amazon uses third-party contractors that hire drivers who wear Amazon branded uniforms and drive vans with the Amazon logo but are not employed directly by the e-commerce retailer. “They are not Amazon employees,” Hards said.
In July, air hub workers walked off the job and picketed outside the facility as part of a one-day strike over alleged unfair labor practices.
According to the Teamsters, air hub workers in September “successfully shut down operations with full pay until conditions improved” when wildfires “caused intense heat and dangerous fumes at their facility and Amazon refused to safeguard their health.”
The Southern California facilities join a list of Amazon facilities in California and nationwide where at least some workers are trying to unionize. Strike authorization votes also were approved by workers at facilities in Skokie, Illinois, and at two in New York City. In total, said the Teamster’s Deniz, more than 8,000 workers have voted to authorize a strike at the seven Amazon facilities.