San Francisco Amazon Warehouse Workers Join Growing Union Drive with Teamsters

Updated 9 a.m. Thursday

More than 100 Amazon warehouse workers in San Francisco have asked the company to voluntarily recognize their new union with the Teamsters, a move that experts said is unlikely to yield a contract deal without additional government or community pressure.

Employees at the Amazon DCK6 facility in the city’s Bayview neighborhood, who have been organizing with the Teamsters since last year, said they are pushing for better pay and safer conditions. Many work part-time and lack basic benefits, according to a union press release.

“We need good pay and benefits to take care of our families too. That’s why we formed a union with the Teamsters,” warehouse worker Jocelyn Vargas said in a statement. “We are essential workers, and it’s time Amazon treats us that way.”

In a statement sent to KQED on Wednesday evening, a spokesperson for Amazon said: “Because this union has a track record of misrepresenting the facts, we’re skeptical that their claims here are accurate.”

Amazon, one of the world’s largest online retailers, has for years weathered a wave of unrest and growing unionization efforts among its employees, who have cited insufficient pay and safety concerns, including a high injury rate and excessive indoor heat. The company’s net income was $30.4 billion last year.

While the e-commerce giant has resisted worker efforts to unionize and negotiate contracts, the Teamsters’ increasing involvement is a “game changer,” said Bill Gould, who teaches labor and employment law at Stanford University, because of the resources and expertise brought by one of America’s largest unions.

About 5,500 Amazon workers with the independent Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island, N.Y., which struggled to get recognized by the company, voted this summer to join forces with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The union, which has 1.3 million members in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, said hundreds of Amazon drivers in Queens, N.Y., also officially joined their ranks last week.

The Teamsters don’t want Amazon to undercut the higher wages and workplace protections the union secured last year for workers at UPS, a competitor, Gould said.

California regulators fined Amazon nearly $6 million in June for violating safety rules aimed at preventing warehouse worker injuries. The company has appealed the citation and is still awaiting a hearing, said Tim Shadix, legal director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center. The California Department of Industrial Relations did not immediately respond to a request for an update on the case.

Over the last decade, Amazon has been accused of unfair labor practices, such as surveillance and retaliation against workers for organizing, in hundreds of cases across the country, according to National Labor Relations Board records.

“Amazon is rigidly anti-union and has fought union organization at every step of the process,” said Gould, a former chairman of the NLRB. “The law isn’t as effective and the company has managed to delay worker rights.”

There are various ways workers can form a union, including by requesting voluntary recognition from their employer, as the San Francisco warehouse workers did. They are the first Amazon warehouse workers to do so, while others have sought recognition by petitioning for an NLRB election, the Teamsters noted.

KQED’s Gilare Zada contributed to this report.