Amazon workers across seven facilities in New York, Georgia, California and Illinois went on strike on Thursday to lobby for better benefits, higher wages and safer working conditions.
The strike, organized by members of the Teamsters union, is intended to pressure Amazon to come to the negotiating table and avoid disruptions during the peak of the holiday shopping season. The union had previously given Amazon until Sunday to agree to bargaining dates for a contract.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement. “We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it.”
In a statement to CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson said the Teamsters have been on a year-long campaign to “intentionally mislead the public.” While the union claims it represents thousands of employees and drivers, the protesters at the sites are “almost entirely outsiders,” Amazon said.
“The truth is that they were unable to get enough support from our employees and partners and have brought in outsiders to harass and intimidate our team, which is inappropriate and dangerous,” the company said, adding that it’s “continuing to focus on getting customers their holiday orders.”
A representative for the Teamsters didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s inquiry about whether outsiders are participating in the strike.
The Teamsters claim that nearly 10,000 Amazon workers have joined the organization, which represents less than 1% of the company’s workforce of 1.53 million, as of Dec. 31, 2023. The union said that Thursday’s campaign is the largest strike against Amazon in American history.
Amazon has long opposed unions among its workforce, but efforts to organize started materializing in 2022, when warehouse workers on New York’s Staten Island voted to join a union. Amazon had aggressively fought unionization efforts, so it was a stinging defeat for the company.
In June, employees in the Amazon Labor Union, which spearheaded the Staten Island movement, voted to affiliate with the Teamsters after struggling to negotiate a contract with Amazon.
–CNBC’s Annie Palmer contributed to this report
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