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.
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 San Bernardino International Airport.
Kara Deniz, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters, one of the largest unions in the world with more than 1.3 million members, declined to say how many workers voted to authorize a strike, or when a strike might occur.
The union said in a Dec. 17 statement that the strike authorization vote came after Amazon ignored a December 15 deadline to recognize the union and negotiate a contract for higher wages and better benefits.
Amazon disputes the union’s number of potentially thousands of workers threatening to strike at its Southern California facilities.
About 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 planes 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 making sure the packages are placed on the correct delivery trucks for delivery across the region, she said.
“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public — claiming they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers,’” Hards said. “They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false story. The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers into joining them, which is illegal and is the subject of several ongoing unfair labor practice charges against the union.”
Hards disputed the union’s account of workers seeking representation at her company’s San Bernardino air hub. She said those workers have not filed signature cards with the National Labor Relations Board, a necessary next step required to vote for unionization.
She also said Amazon uses third-party contractors who 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 left 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 protect 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. Votes on strike authorization were also approved by workers at plants in Skokie, Illinois, and at two in New York City. In total, the Teamster’s Deniz said, more than 8,000 workers have voted to authorize a strike at the seven Amazon plants.
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