SF Amazon Warehouse Workers Join National Strike in Demand for Labor Agreement

Workers at an Amazon warehouse facility in San Francisco on Thursday joined a nationwide strike at one of the busiest shopping times of the year for the company.

Teamsters union members at the Bayview District facility voted this week to authorize the walkout, joining workers in six other facilities nationwide, after saying Amazon ignored their deadline to meet at the bargaining table.

The action comes more than two months after roughly 100 warehouse workers at the facility asked the company to voluntarily recognize their union, which they have been organizing with since last year.

Workers say they’re prepared to strike until Amazon agrees to meet and discusses granting the workers a fair contract and union recognition.

Around 50 workers gathered outside the Bayview facility Thursday morning, many of them wearing Teamsters beanies and hoodies, as part of what the union called the largest strike against Amazon in U.S. history.

Although the strike is primarily of Amazon employees, there are a number of third-party delivery drivers picketing with them.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has in the past successfully argued that Amazon essentially controls those third-party drivers’ duties and thus owes them the same courtesy that they do their employees — which eventually culminated in Amazon boosting their pay.

“The packages don’t move without us,” said Josh Black, a part-time worker. “They’re a $2 trillion company, and we think they can afford to give us a living wage, to give us fair benefits, to give us safe working conditions.”

Because part-time workers don’t receive health benefits, Black said he has to pay for his diabetes medication and treatment out of pocket.

Another part-time worker, Leah Pensler, called Amazon “one of the greediest companies in human history.”

“They hope that we come in, we work here for a few weeks or maybe a month or two, and that we leave,” she said. “We know this company has the resources to give us what we deserve.”

Pensler also said that seeing her “union siblings at UPS” receive good benefits and health care only further aggravated and motivated the union to go on strike.

“Amazon is pushing its workers closer to the picket line by failing to show them the respect they have earned,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.

For its part, Amazon has accused the union of harassment and intimidation.

“The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, said in an email.

Nantel accused the Teamsters of “intentionally misleading the public” with the “false narrative” that they represent some 10,000 workers at 10 Amazon facilities, a claim she adamantly denied.

Another spokesperson denounced the strike as a “PR play” and insisted there has been no discernible impact on its operations.

Amazon has filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB against the Teamsters, both on a national and local level, in several different locations across the country, including San Francisco and San Bernardino.

Ren Fitzgerald, a sophomore at UC Berkeley, attended Thursday’s walkout to support the workers.

“We are entering a workforce that is not fair to workers. It’s only fair to the billionaires,” Fitzgerald said. “But class solidarity has always been more powerful. So good luck, Amazon. We’re going to win this one.”