NYT - Amazon Warehouse Workers in New York City Join Protest (free link)

The workers’ union hopes that adding employees at the Staten Island warehouse to a protest started by delivery drivers will increase pressure on Amazon.



By Noam Scheiber and Santul Nerkar
Dec. 21, 2024
Updated 12:43 p.m. ET

Signaling an escalation in a labor campaign that began at seven Amazon delivery hubs on Thursday, workers at the company’s largest Staten Island warehouse began a protest there at midnight Saturday morning. They were joined by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, later in the morning.

The Staten Island warehouse, known as JFK8, has more than 5,000 workers, by far the largest group at Amazon who have sought to be represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. That makes it the union’s greatest potential source of leverage as the Teamsters tries to pressure Amazon to bargain with drivers and other workers who have organized.

“Amazon is jeopardizing the holidays for consumers so they can try to make an extra buck,” Connor Spence, president of the local chapter representing workers at JFK8, said in a statement. “Amazon workers are standing up to demand this corporation finally treat them with respect.”




Unlike the drivers the Teamsters have tried to unionize at delivery hubs, the Staten Island workers are employed by Amazon directly rather than through contractors. That gives them a somewhat stronger legal foothold for challenging the company.

But union leaders at JFK8 have struggled to sustain the support of workers in the warehouse since they voted to unionize in 2022, and only several dozen workers were participating in the action late Saturday morning. Some said they had been scheduled to work that day and did not clock in, while others said they had not been scheduled to work.

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