The merger, which is pending ratification by workers at an Amazon shipping warehouse, gives the fledgling union a major boost to secure a first contract with the megaretailer.
byClaudia Irizarry Aponte
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The labor union that defied the odds to organize workers at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse is moving to affiliate with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, union leadership and the Teamsters announced last week.
The Amazon Labor Union’s steps to get the backing of the 1.3 million-member union comes more than two years after it won a recognition vote from staff at the JFK8 fulfillment center, which remains the only unionized Amazon facility in the United States.
The move to affiliate with the Teamsters, which is pending ratification by members, gives the warehouse workers stronger legal and financial resources to force the megaretailer to the bargaining table and secure a first contract. And it could stand to revitalize the struggling labor group, which has been plagued by financial issues and infighting.
“Today is an historical day for labor in America as we now combine forces with one of the most powerful unions to take on Amazon together,” ALU president and co-founder Chris Smalls wrote on X. “Our message is clear we want a Contract and we want it Now.” Smalls did not respond to a message and a phone call from THE CITY seeking comment.
Reached for comment on Thursday, an Amazon spokesperson told THE CITY the company had nothing to say about the affiliation news.
Union and reform leadership had been in talks with the Teamsters for several weeks on an agreement that would charter the union as an autonomous Teamsters local, including at a mid-May summit in Washington, D.C. The rank and file will vote to approve the merger in the coming weeks.
Sultana Hossain, a member of the ALU’s reform caucus, said she would vote to affiliate with the Teamsters, citing their resources, funding and influence on the national stage. Hossain, 26, was fired from JFK8 last year, she claims in retaliation for her organizing.
“Amazon needs to get ready. We’re ready, we know what we have to do, and now we’ll have the resources to do it,” said Hossain. “It will just make it that much easier for workers to understand that we need to be a part of this, like every single one of us, we have to have each other’s back and we together need to take on Amazon. No one is going to do it for us.”
The formerly independent union will now be known as ALU-International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 1 and will represent the roughly 8,000 warehouse workers at JFK8. It has jurisdiction over the five boroughs.
News of the ALU’s merger with the Teamsters sends a warning shot to Amazon and proves that the union is stronger than the retailer may have assumed, said Rebecca Givan, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University.
“I think Amazon, as an employer, was trying to beat the Amazon Labor Union in a war of attrition, and this is essentially a massive boost to the workers, and suggests that Amazon can’t just wait them out and kind of run off the clock on bargaining,” she said.
The alliance is also a boost to the Teamsters’ ambitions to organize Amazon delivery drivers nationally. Through that campaign they have so far organized roughly 80 drivers employed by an Amazon subcontractor in Palmdale, Calif.
“In this partnership, the Teamsters and ALU will ensure Amazon workers at JFK8 realize the first contract they are long overdue,” Teamsters international president Sean O’Brien said in a statement last week. “We will continue to expand our organizing campaigns nationwide. We will exhaust all resources to hold Amazon accountable.”
Smalls told the Washington Post that the decision to affiliate with the Teamsters “made sense as opposed to working on separate campaigns” to organize Amazon workers.
ALU has struggled to organize more facilities since its historic victory at JFK8 in April 2022. A month later, it lost a union vote at a neighboring warehouse known as LDJ5, and lost another election in Albany that same year.
Amazon, which has spent millions of dollars on union-busting consultants since 2021, has lost multiple appeals it has submitted to federal regulators seeking to overturn the 2022 JFK8 union election results. The Seattle-based retail giant is one of several companies — including SpaceX and Trader Joe’s – arguing in legal filings that the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections and certain labor disputes, is unconstitutional.
Amazon Labor Union is also in the midst of its first-ever internal leadership election campaign, after an internal reform caucus filed a federal lawsuit against union leadership last year to force a vote.
A date for the internal leadership election vote is expected to be scheduled by a court-appointed monitor sometime next month, the ALU Democratic Reform Caucus said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Both of these milestones, elections and affiliation, mark a fresh start for our union,” the statement read.
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