Amazon has spent years and years and no small amount of money trying to get away with having non-union drivers it can treat like garbage. Well, hundreds of drivers at one facility in Queens, New York, have decided to say goodbye to the pee bottles and hello to the Teamsters, the union reported on Monday. Good for them!
Drivers at the facility, known as DBK4, have been working with the Teamsters to form a union for over a year, and now that they have been successful, Amazon will be required to come to the table with the Teamsters to negotiate contracts for them. Their wish list includes such big asks as “consistent schedules, properly maintained delivery trucks and reasonable workloads.”
This is a big deal not just because Amazon is so resistant to unions, but because it’s the result of two separate recent National Labor Relations Board rulings that held that Amazon is a joint owner of the delivery firms it contracts with, and is therefore obligated to negotiate with unions representing them.
In one case, the Teamsters organized workers at one of Amazon’s contracted delivery service providers in California, only for Amazon to turn around and end their contract. Amazon said it was planning to do this before it even heard the word “union,” while the workers were quite sure it was retaliation. Though they were unable to prove that it was retaliation, the board held that Amazon was, indeed, considered a joint employer of the drivers.
In another case, earlier this month, the NLRB held that Amazon was making unlawful threats to employees considering unionization at a firm in Atlanta, and that it was specifically unlawful because of their status as a joint employer.
“The NLRB made clear that Amazon has a legal obligation to bargain with its drivers and meet them at the negotiating table to improve wages, working conditions, safety standards, and everything in between,” Sean O’Brien, general president of the Teamsters, said in a statement.
They did! Though we do certainly hope that Sean O’Brien — who spoke at this year’s RNC — is aware that if Donald Trump wins, he will once again appoint anti-labor, corporate attorneys to the NLRB who will, more than likely, reinstate their own rule about who qualifies as a joint employer faster than you can say Project 2025.
That rule, known as the March 2020 rule, says that a company is determined to be a joint employer based on whether or not the company “(1) hires or fires the employee; (2) supervises and controls the employee’s work schedule or conditions of employment to a substantial degree; (3) determines the employee’s rate and method of payment; and (4) maintains the employee’s employment records.”
In other words, Amazon would not qualify and therefore could refuse to work with any contracted delivery service if their workers unionize, whereas they do qualify as a joint employer under the current (and longstanding previous) rule, which holds that an employer “includes any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to an employee.” That, obviously, does include Amazon in these cases.
It’s almost as if elections have consequences! And that sometimes those consequences can be “unionized Amazon workers not having to pee in bottles anymore” and other times those consequences are “Amazon can do whatever the fuck they want.”
Which will America (and Sean O’Brien) choose?
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