After years of trying to organize Amazon workers and pressure the company to negotiate wages and working conditions, two prominent unions are joining forces to take on the online retailer.
The partnership was finalized in a vote that ended Monday after members of the Amazon Workers Union, the only union officially representing Amazon warehouse workers in the U.S., voted overwhelmingly to join the 1.3 million-member Teamsters International union. The vote was monitored by the Amazon union.
The ALU won an unexpected victory in elections at its Staten Island warehouse in 2022, but negotiations have yet to begin with Amazon, which continues to contest the election results. Leaders of both unions said the partnership agreement would strengthen their position against Amazon and give the ALU more funding and staff support.
“The Teamsters and ALU will fight vigorously to ensure Amazon workers have the good jobs and safe working conditions they deserve in their union contract,” Teamsters President Sean O'Brien said in a statement early Tuesday.
Amazon declined to comment on the partnership.
The Teamsters have been stepping up efforts to organize Amazon workers across the country. The union voted to create an Amazon division in 2021, and O'Brien was elected that year on a platform of expanding into the company.
The Teamsters have allocated $8 million to the ALU to help organize at Amazon, and the large union has told it it is prepared to dedicate more than $300 million of its strike and defense fund to the effort, according to ALU President Christian Smalls. The Teamsters would not comment on the budget for organizing at Amazon.
The Teamsters also recently reached a coalition agreement with workers organized at KCVG, a Kentucky facility that is Amazon's largest air hub in the U.S. Because Amazon relies heavily on the hub to meet its one- and two-day delivery targets, experts say unionizing KCVG could give workers greater leverage.
David Levin, staff director for the Teamsters Democratic Labor Union, a reform group within the union that helped rally UPS workers during last year's successful contract campaign, said many of the Teamsters members involved in the pressure on UPS are now helping organize Amazon workers.
“Labor leaders and activists have stepped out of the UPS contract campaign and are involved in forming a volunteer organizing committee for Amazon,” Levin said.
Unionization efforts at Amazon over the past decade have been scattered among a variety of existing unions and independent worker groups, and some experts argue that establishing a significant union presence there would require intensified organizing, given the company's size and longstanding opposition to unions.
“Different efforts, different sectors of efforts, have led to some important advances,” says Barry Eidlin, a sociologist who studies labor at Montreal's McGill University, “but they've also revealed the limitations of decentralized approaches.”
The partnership agreement with the Teamsters, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times, stipulates that the ALU has exclusive rights within the Teamsters to organize Amazon warehouse workers in New York City and has committed to assisting the new chapter with organizing, research, communications and legal representation.
The bill also gives the ALU a role in the Teamsters' broader Amazon organizing, stipulating that at least three local members will participate in “business planning and strategy discussions” for the Teamsters' Amazon division and that the local will “provide expertise to assist in organizing at other Amazon facilities across the country.”
Although the ALU energized the labor movement with its 2022 victory, it quickly faced major challenges: It was defeated in a union election at a warehouse near Staten Island just weeks later, and then in another election that fall at a warehouse near Albany, New York.
After the second defeat, the union began to fragment, with several ALU organizers expressing concern that union leaders had too much power and were not accountable to members. Smalls maintained that the union was worker-led.
Dissident ALU groups critical of Smalls sued to force a leadership election in 2023. The parties announced a settlement in January, and an election is scheduled for the summer, monitored by federal court-approved observers. Smalls is not running, but the dissident group, ALU For Democratic Reform, has fielded candidates for all four leadership posts. The slate is being led by ALU founder Conor Spence.
Meanwhile, ALU has struggled financially, with assets of $33,000 and liabilities of $81,000 at the end of last year, according to federal filings.
In May, both ALU factions visited Teamsters headquarters in Washington, where Teamsters officials pitched both factions the idea of ​​affiliation, Smalls said.
He said the Teamsters offered to provide Amazon workers with resources, including strike pay, while largely maintaining the company's union's independence. He signed the alliance agreement in early June.
The signing surprised reform caucuses, who had told the Teamsters that ALU members needed more time to deliberate, but ultimately decided to support affiliation as long as ALU members ratified it, stating that affiliation would help “transform our established base on Staten Island into a militant, self-governing local organization.”
Spence, the candidate for president of the ALU's Reform Caucus, said if the group wins the Staten Island election, it will work with workers to develop a plan to take on Amazon and then present it to the Teamsters to secure the necessary funding.
Amazon fired Spence last fall for violating its policies regarding after-hours use of facilities. Spence is challenging the firing in a lawsuit pending before an administrative judge at the National Labor Relations Board.
Spence and another fired Amazon employee showed up in front of the warehouse last week to try to convince employees to ratify the partnership agreement, but were escorted by police, who handcuffed the two former employees and took them to the police station where they were given tickets to appear in court.
Amazon spokeswoman Lisa Lewandowski said police were called in because of a group of people — mostly Teamsters — who were causing trouble outside the warehouse and refusing Amazon's requests to leave. After police arrived, everyone except Spence and his former coworkers left, Lewandowski said. (Employees are allowed to distribute materials outside the building during off-hours.)
Spence said he has shown up in front of the building multiple times in recent weeks for organizing activities but has never encountered police.
