Teamsters members have been picketing outside the Amazon distribution center near Industrial Street this week as part of a national campaign to demand union recognition for workers who the giant company argues are not even employees.
The picket lines are designed to interfere with holiday deliveries: As Teamster President Sean O’Brien put it on X:
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it. These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible. Instead, they’ve pushed workers to the limit and now they’re paying the price. This strike is on them.”
From a San Francisco worker:
“What we’re doing is historic,” said Leah Pensler, a warehouse worker at DCK6 in San Francisco. “We are fighting against a vicious union-busting campaign, and we are going to win.”
The picket line in San Francisco wasn’t blocking drivers from going in or out, although everything slowed down as traffic backed up a bit. Still, they were having an impact: Several local officials, including Sup. Shamann Walton, showed up on the picket lines, and while the Chronicle gave the picket only modest coverage (and not on the front page), KQED did a lengthy piece. The action is getting significant national news media attention.
Some people on social media talked about boycotting Amazon, although the union hasn’t called for that action.
Amazon is, of course, a huge, very rich, and very profitable company, on target to make $60 billion this year. The company’s profit margin is more than 40 percent—astonishing in any retail operation, where margins are typically below 10 percent.
In other words, the company makes a ton of money, in part because its workers aren’t getting their share of the profits.
Here’s how it works: The drivers who deliver the packages are, for the most part, not technically Amazon employees. Instead, they work for a third-party vendor—so Amazon is refusing to recognize the union.
But according to the latest federal guidelines (which could be overturned by the Trump Administration) since Amazon directs the hours they work, and they wear Amazon uniforms, and drive trucks with the Amazon logo on them, the giant company needs to recognize and negotiate with the union.
That hasn’t happened in most places, including San Francisco, where the workers have no contract.
Just the money Amazon founder Jeff Bezos spent on his boat—paying essentially no taxes when he bought it—would be enough to give a lot of workers a nice raise.
The picket line is at Industrial Street and Jerrold Ave.
