A decision by the National Labor Relations Board on Thursday marked “the beginning of the end for Amazon’s favorite legal loophole,” said one grassroots labor group, as the board ruled that Amazon is a joint employer of its drivers — making it legally required to recognize and bargain with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union that represents dozens of the delivery workers.
The NLRB concluded its investigation that began more than a year ago, when 84 Amazon workers at the company’s Palmdale, California warehouse joined the Teamsters Local 396 union, negotiating a contract with Amazon’s Delivery Service Partner (DSP), a subcontractor which Amazon claimed was the drivers’ employer.
“Despite wielding absolute control over the drivers’ terms and conditions of employment,” said the Teamsters in a statement on Thursday, “Amazon maintained that it did not employ the workers and refused to recognize or negotiate with the Teamsters.”
Through its investigation, the NLRB found Amazon had unlawfully refused to recognize the workers’ decision to unionize, threatened employees with job loss, held illegal captive audience meetings where managers spread anti-union misinformation, and intimidated workers.
The NLRB is expected to prosecute Amazon “before an NLRB judge for its serious and callous violations of workers’ rights.”
The ruling comes less than a year after the NLRB finalized its joint-employer rule, establishing that two or more entities can be considered joint employers of a group of employees if they both have employment relationship with the workers and help to determine their terms and conditions of employment.
That ruling and the decision announced on Thursday, said the Teamsters, “shatters [the] myth” that Amazon is not the Palmdale workers’ employer even as it “exercises widespread control over drivers’ labor and working conditions.”
One driver called the decision a “groundbreaking ruling.”
“Amazon is our joint employer,” he said in a video posted to social media. “Why? Because the whole world knows who our true employer is… We wear their colors, drive their vans, and yet, we’re not their employees? How does that make sense?”
HUGE NEWS FOR AMAZON DRIVERS! The National Labor Relations Board decided that we are Amazon employees. What does this mean? Amazon HAS to recognize our union and negotiate a fair contract.
— Amazon Teamsters (@amazonteamsters) August 22, 2024
The time to get involved is now! https://t.co/5WVxKQ94iW pic.twitter.com/Y2ErJM4WVV
With the ruling, said Athena, a grassroots coalition of Amazon workers, the NLRB has told the company that “it can’t game the system anymore when its comes to drivers.”
“Lots of Amazon’s wealth was build by gaming tax laws, employment laws, public subsidies, lax privacy laws, unenforced antitrust laws, etc. — we all let it go on too long, but not anymore,” said the group.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy