Amazon is facing another union battle — and this time it could go nationwide.
The Seattle-based e-tailing giant — which in April fended off a closely watched attempt to unionize a warehouse in Alabama — is now facing a threat from the powerful Teamsters union, which on Thursday will vote on a resolution to organize thousands of Amazon drivers and warehouse workers across the country.
At its annual convention, leaders of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters are expected to adopt the initiative to fund and assist workers in securing a labor contract at Amazon amid global pressure on the retailer to improve wages and working conditions.
The push comes on the heels of a high-profile labor vote at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., which failed, but which is being appealed by the retail workers union. Shortly after the bruising battle, Amazon’s billionaire boss Jeff Bezos wrote in a letter to shareholders that the company “could do better” by its employees and he vowed to make Amazon “Earth’s best employer.”
The Teamster resolution, which according to a spokesperson is expected to pass, will create a “special Amazon division to specifically aid Amazon workers and defend industry standards that the Teamsters have set in the logistics industry over the past 100 years,” according to a statement by the union, which has 1.4 million members in the US.
“Amazon is changing the nature of work in our country and touches many core Teamster industries and employers such as UPS, parcel delivery, freight, airline, food distribution and motion picture, and presents an existential threat to the standards we have set in these industries,” according to the two-page resolution.
The resolution also says a union contract is “a top priority” for the Teamsters that will “supply all resources necessary” to address “the existential threat that is Amazon.”
As the Teamsters ramp up the rhetoric, the union’s national director Randy Korgan in a Salon editorial last week likened the online giant’s power to the large corporations of the 1920s that exploited workers.
“As we embark further into the 2020s, the Teamster will make sure that Amazon cannot repeat a history where workers suffered acutely to make ends meet and were frequently injured or even killed on the job while company executives stuffed their pockets with profits,” he wrote.
Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.