The announcement that the Teamsters – one of America’s most powerful unions – is going to mount an ambitious campaign to unionize Amazon warehouses across the US presents the e-retailing colossus with a far bigger threat than the recent effort to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama ever did.
In Alabama, Amazon’s fierce anti-union press crushed the organizing drive by a small union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). And besides, Amazon had a significant home-field advantage in bright red Alabama. For Amazon, the Alabama face-off felt like a one-and-done win.
But the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, with 1.3 million members, is a far larger, richer, stronger union, and has a century of experience mobilizing and unionizing warehouse workers. Not only that, the Teamsters will mount drives in many places where unions are popular and powerful and arguably have a home-court advantage – think California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey and Washington state. In confronting the Teamsters, Amazon will no doubt feel it’s being plunged into a never-ending, head-to-head competition against an Olympic-caliber opponent.
It’s one thing for Amazon to deploy its crack team of anti-union lawyers and consultants to stomp out a union drive at a single warehouse center in Alabama, but it will be quite another thing for Amazon and its anti-union Swat team if the Teamsters mount union drives in 20 or 30 warehouses at once.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Teamsters union is undertaking a national drive against Amazon, the nation’s second largest private-sector employer. Amazon, Teamster officials say, is undermining wages and working conditions in warehousing and trucking, the Teamsters’ two main industries. No surprise that the Teamsters president, James P Hoffa, told his union’s convention on Tuesday that Amazon was “an existential threat to every Teamster out there”.
Asked why the Teamsters are taking on Amazon, Randy Korgan, the union’s national Amazon director, told the Guardian: “It’s a natural. Our union has represented this industry for more than 100 years. We represent hundreds of thousands of workers in this industry.
“Truth be told,” Korgan continued, “Amazon’s impact on this industry is driving wages, working conditions and safety and health conditions downward. You have a lot of UPS, FedEx and US Postal Service drivers doing the delivery portion of this job. These are good-paying middle-class jobs for middle-class families. Amazon’s model is not good for working families, it’s threatening middle-class jobs.” Korgan said Amazon drivers earn about $16 an hour in southern California, while unionized UPS drivers there earn $38 an hour, with $29 an hour above that in health, pension and other benefits.
Labor experts say it makes sense for the Teamsters to target Amazon. “It’s good that the Teamsters are doing this,” said Stewart Acuff, former organizing director for the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation. “They’re perfectly placed to do this. They’re large, they have major resources, they are committed to organizing and spending the money that’s necessary. Most important, this is their core industry. They have all the interest in the world in battling Amazon.
“They need to do this for their members,” Acuff added. “They also need to do this for their employers so their employers know the Teamsters are willing to spend money to wage war to maintain standards and not let Amazon undercut unionized transportation companies.”
Korgan said the Teamsters would often seek to bypass union elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) because many unions see that process as hugely favoring employers, which have access to workers 24 hours a day. That’s one reason the RWDSU lost badly in Alabama, with 1,798 against unionizing to 738 in favor.
“The NLRB strategy is only one of many ways to seek recognition,” Korgan said. One way, Korgan said, would be to seek to pressure Amazon to agree to card check and neutrality (not to oppose unionization). “Those are some of the strategies,” Korgan said. “Everything is on the table.” The Teamsters’ resolution on Amazon also spoke of “shop floor strikes, city-wide strikes and actions in the streets”.
Asked to be more specific about tactics and timing, Korgan said: “Stay tuned.”
Korgan said the Teamsters’ organizing efforts at Amazon would be helped greatly by thousands of Teamster members who volunteer to help – whether by joining a rally outside an Amazon warehouse or by telling Amazon workers of the advantages of unions. “We’re part of the fabric of these communities, we’re not an outside institution,” Korgan said. “We’re not a third party. We’re coaching baseball right next to that individual who works at Amazon. We’re living in the same neighborhoods. Our kids go to the same schools.”
Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, said some areas hold promise for the Teamsters’ efforts; he pointed to the Inland Empire, an area east of Los Angeles teeming with warehouses.
Wong said the Teamsters might be able to win there because southern California has strong unions and many pro-labor lawmakers, and besides, the head of the Los Angeles County Labor Federation is a prominent Teamster leader. “Anywhere you have a robust labor movement with strong labor-community alliances and elected officials who are willing to speak out and support the right of workers to form unions, that gives you a leg up,” Wong said.
He praised the Teamsters for undertaking its Amazon campaign, but said it won’t be easy. “When you take on a giant corporation that has a strong, anti-union policy, it’s going to be an uphill fight,” Wong said. “It will be a long-term, protracted fight.”
Wong said the Teamsters have a “mixed reputation, given the legacy of the original Jimmy Hoffa”.
But he added: “The Teamsters are known as a fighting union that has successfully raised the wages and working conditions for workers in these industries.”
In other words, the Teamsters have a reputation, a swagger, that still attracts many workers. In recent years, the Teamsters have unionized more than 20,000 school bus drivers and scored numerous victories unionizing warehouses, including at Sysco Foods and US Foods.
In its Amazon campaign, the question will be whether the Teamsters’ reputation as a fierce, fighting union that delivers to workers will succeed in overcoming the fierce, anti-union propaganda campaign that Amazon conducts in its warehouses.
