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84 Amazon Delivery Drivers Just Won a $30 an Hour Union Contract (vox.com) 36

Posted by EditorDavid from the teaming-with-Teamsters dept.
CNBC reports that 84 Amazon delivery drivers at a California facility "joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the union said Monday, in a win for labor organizers that have long sought to gain a foothold at the e-retailer."

An anonymous reader shared this follow-up report from Vox: [T]hey unanimously ratified the contract, which will bring their wages from around $20 currently to $30 by September and would allow them to refuse to do deliveries they consider unsafe. But that victory is a bit complicated... They wear Amazon vests and drive Amazon-branded vehicles, have schedules dictated by Amazon, and can even be fired by Amazon. But they're technically employed by Battle Tested Strategies (BTS), one of approximately 3,000 delivery contract companies that make up Amazon's extensive delivery network. BTS voluntarily recognized the union after a majority of workers signed union authorization cards and negotiated the union contract.

Amazon has told Vox that its contract with BTS, which exclusively delivers for Amazon, was terminated "well before" workers notified the tech giant Monday, but that the contract hasn't expired yet. The union said that the delivery people are still working for Amazon and that the contract goes through October, when it typically would auto-renew. What happens next depends on Amazon, the workers, and the interpretation of outdated US labor law... At the crux of the delivery driver issue is whether Amazon controls enough of what the workers do to be considered a joint employer. "If Amazon is able to get away with ignoring the workers' decision and hiding behind the subcontractor relationships, then I'm afraid we'll have yet another story of the failure of American labor law," said Benjamin Sachs, a labor professor at Harvard Law School. "If this leads to a recognition that these drivers are Amazon employees, joint employees, then this could be massively important."

One element of note: These workers organized in California, which has a lower bar for who is considered an employee, and by extension, who enjoys union protections... Another element that the National Labor Relations Board will likely have to decide is whether Amazon terminated the contract with BTS in order to avoid working with a union, something that would be illegal if they were considered employees.
The article also notes that elsewhere, 50 YouTube contractors also voted to unionize this week.
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84 Amazon Delivery Drivers Just Won a $30 an Hour Union Contract More

84 Amazon Delivery Drivers Just Won a $30 an Hour Union Contract

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  • the rest of the amazon warehouse needs to union! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Saturday April 29, 2023 @01:42PM (#63485656)

    the rest of the amazon warehouse needs to be union as well.

    • Re:the rest of the amazon warehouse needs to union (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday April 29, 2023 @01:47PM (#63485670)
      They know it but they are afraid of reprisals. They'll get one eventually but it might take a few election cycles for the country to shift enough that we can start getting worker protection laws they were stripped over the last 40 years put back in place

      • Re:the rest of the amazon warehouse needs to union (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Atari1040STFMUser ( 9036901 ) on Saturday April 29, 2023 @07:25PM (#63486130)

        They know it but they are afraid of reprisals. They'll get one eventually but it might take a few election cycles for the country to shift enough that we can start getting worker protection laws they were stripped over the last 40 years put back in place

        The attack on unions started just after WWII with Taft-Hartley, which brought us Right-to-Work-For-Less laws, and it also kicked out lots of union officers due to the requirement to pledge they are not Communists. Reagan obviously made it worse with PATCO but this has not been decades in the making but literally generations at this point. I hope it does not take generations to move it back to putting workers in a much stronger position.

  • ...swims like an Amazon duck, and quacks like an Amazon duck, then it probably is an Amazon duck. (Duck Test [wikipedia.org])

    • But who agreed to $30? Did Amazon, or BTS? If they don't really work for BTS, then BTS can't set their pay.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

        Why not both? [bakerlaw.com]

        In joint employment, there is usually a direct employer and a secondary business. The direct employer is the company that hires, schedules and pays the workers and provides their W-2s. The secondary business is the potential joint employer. It does not hire or pay the direct employerâ(TM)s employees, but it benefits from their services.

        It sounds as if BTS is the direct employer and Amazon is the secondary business. But what does an AmLaw 100 firm really know, anyways?

  • Good for them! (Score:4)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Saturday April 29, 2023 @01:50PM (#63485676)
    I fully support unionization in the private economy. Workers getting a better seat at the table is a good thing. But, all involved need to beware, in the private economy fiscal viability will win in the end.

  • Win/win (Score:2, Funny)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 )

    On the one hand I can't stand unions ( I've been a member of several ). On the other, it's amazon.

    Let Them Fight.

    • What do you have against unions?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        What do you have against unions?

        In the U.S., at least, unions are filled with lazy, incompetent workers (since Unions don't promote quality, just seniority). At most, Unions are nothing more than fronts for organized crime (i.e. Teamsters).

  • I think this very clearly will result in Amazon being considered a joint employer of the workers.

  • It's fine if BTS wants to be a union shop that works with Amazon. While I'm no contract lawyer, it sounds like these workers of BTS formed a union, which was then recognized by BTS.

    BTS has a contract with Amazon to do deliveries. The formation of the union has nothing to do with the contract between BTS and Amazon. So BTS is likely taking the haircut for the wages since they are the ones that pay those wages, not Amazon.

    That BTS is a union won't really matter to Amazon one bit. BTS will accept the renewal c

    • That BTS is a union won't really matter to Amazon one bit. BTS will accept the renewal contract with Amazon or it will get it's contract canceled.

      Agreed. If BTS' contract has enough overhead they can afford to pay their drivers an extra 50% wage increase, and the renewal of the contract with Amazon remains at the same negotiated price, then I don't see a problem.

      If BTS wants to increase their contract price by 50% at the next renewal then I don't see a problem with Amazon searching for a new contract delivery service. If any service company told me their prices were increasing by 50% I would search for alternatives.

  • I remember when Amazon's favorite thing to do seemed to be bragging about how it was going to give everyone that "$15 an hour" wage that they were fighting and bickering over not getting at many other entry-level jobs.

    Shockingly, no sooner did people receive it than they demanded more. "We should be getting $18/hr. for this kind of work!" "I think we should demand $20!"

    And now, Amazon finds itself in the situation where it's not comfortable paying more compensation for all the warehouse and delivery drivers

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      You would have a point if we hadn't seen decades of stagnant wages (especially compared to inflation) all the while seeing executive pay skyrocket.

      $20/hr is still only $41k/year. There are some parts of the country where one can get by on that salary but plenty of other areas where it's not enough. I worked in warehousing when I was a college student in the 90s. It's not mentally stimulating but it's far from easy.

      Unions help level the playing field. There is a balance, though, as I think unions ca

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by King_TJ ( 85913 )

        The thing is though? We didn't really have "stagnant wages compared to inflation" for decades. Depending on what you were tracking, there was technically a lot of deflation in the cost of purchases like flat screen televisions or personal computers.

        The biggest two areas that had sharp inflation were higher education and medical expenses.

        IMO, both of those categories bucked the economic trends and demanded outsized payments for other reasons that needed to be addressed separately.

  • I read this title 3 times as "84 Amazon Delivery Drones...." as was looking forward to an exciting tweak in labor laws about AI's. I suppose this story is still about drones though....

  • Completely deserves having to deal with Teamsters, since they treat their employees like garbage. Now they can learn the finer points of gabagool, New Jersey waste management, and contract negotiation meetings off-road in the desert.

  • why do unions get established mostly at the lowest worker level in places like Amazon... it's not as if the workers in managerial roles, or working at the offices have it much better- like the workers in the warehouses, they're subject to BS treatment and conditions- just different. This sort of cast system of union vs non-union at same org creates an adversarial environment.

    With the grotesque profits, terrible worker treatment and health and safety record, and what should be criminal tax avoidance on a gl

    • why do unions get established mostly at the lowest worker level in places like Amazon

      Because the lower level managers get to lord over the lower level workers. That makes them feel like they have power and distracts them from the reality that their main job is to protect the upper level executives from having to directly deal with the peasants... I mean workers.

  • $30 per hour at 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year works out to $60,000. If they're living in the Bay Area or one of the other metropolitan areas it's in a shoe box.

  • Amazon better speed up its delivery drone development.

  • Can Amazon terminate their delivery contract with this delivery provider when the delivery provider's UNION employees go on strike and Amazon packages failed to get delivered in the contracted timeframe?

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