Teamsters expand strike against Amazon

The Teamsters union announced late Friday that warehouse workers at a massive Amazon sorting and distribution center in Staten Island, New York, have joined the thousands of union members who began a strike this week against the online retail giant.

The Teamsters union announced late Friday that warehouse workers at a massive Amazon sorting and distribution center in Staten Island, New York, have joined the thousands of union members who began a strike this week against the online retail giant. But Amazon continues to insist the strike is not affecting shipments to customers, as it only affects a handful of its network of distribution centers. Amazon operates several other distribution centers within miles of its facility in the New York City borough of Staten Island, including a smaller nonunion one that is directly across the street. “Our logistics infrastructure was built to deliver on our customer promise,” the company said Friday in a statement. “We believe in the strength of our network and plan for contingencies to minimize potential operational impact or costs.” The strike is just the latest effort by the Teamsters and other unions to organize workers at Amazon, the nation’s second-largest private sector employer, which has more than 740,000 US workers spread across 1,000 warehouses and distribution centers, according to a recent government report. It is also among the most profitable companies, with net income of $39.2 billion in the first nine months of this year, more than double for the same period of 2023. The Staten Island facility, and the seven other locations where drivers who make deliveries for Amazon are on strike, are a small fraction of Amazon’s massive network. But the Staten Island distribution center, known as JFK8, is a major one for Amazon. The union said it has more than 5,000 permanent hourly workers, a number which Amazon was not able to confirm or deny. It also was the first Amazon location where workers voted to join a union. In April 2022, 55% of workers who participated in a representation election voted to join a union. Before there were efforts to unionize, there had been a walkout by some employees in March 2020 due to health concerns over the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The union said Friday night it has strong support among workers at the distribution center.