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Representatives from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a union that represents more than 1.3 million workers, voted on June 24, 2021, to make organizing Amazon workers a priority.
Amazon faces a big new threat: the mighty Teamsters union, which is one of the nation’s biggest, strongest, and richest labor unions. On Thursday, delegates to the Teamsters convention overwhelmingly approved a resolution that called for mounting an ambitious campaign to mobilize and organize Amazon workers across the United States. The resolution said that “building worker power at Amazon and helping those workers achieve a union contract is a top priority for the Teamsters.”
With 1.32 million members and a reputation of fighting for and delivering to workers, the Teamsters union is intent on being more successful at organizing workers at ferociously anti-union Amazon than the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union was. That union lost badly in its recent effort to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama. The Teamsters’ resolution suggests stepped-up militancy in confronting Amazon, saying the union might engage in “shop floor strikes, city-wide strikes and actions in the streets.”
Randy Korgan, a longtime organizing director for the Teamsters in Southern California, is the union’s national Amazon director. He will oversee what the union is calling its “Amazon Project.” Korgan is a fierce critic of Amazon, recently writing, “There is perhaps no clearer manifestation of how America is failing the working class than Amazon.”
In the following Q&A, Korgan discusses why the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is undertaking its Amazon campaign and how the union plans to build worker power to improve wages and conditions at the nation’s second-largest private-sector employer. (This interview has been shortened and edited for clarity.)
Steven Greenhouse: Why have the Teamsters decided to take on this fight with Amazon?
Randy Korgan: It’s natural. Our union has represented this industry [warehouses] for more than 100 years, going back to a time when these jobs didn’t have protections at all. We represent hundreds of thousands of workers in this industry. It makes all the sense in the world for us to engage in this project.
I don’t want to characterize this as a fight. If the employer wants to pick a fight, that’s what they’re going to do. We’re educating workers. We’re mobilizing workers. We’re explaining the history of our union to workers.
Amazon has hundreds of thousands of workers at its warehouses, and the Teamsters have long represented workers in warehouses across the U.S. What is Amazon’s effect on industry standards?
Amazon’s impact on this industry is driving wages and working conditions and safety conditions downward. It’s an industry where we fought for decades to help the individuals who do these difficult jobs. You have a lot of UPS, FedEx, U.S. Postal Service drivers doing the delivery portion of this job. These are good-paying, middle-class jobs for middle-class families. Amazon’s model is not good for working families; it’s threatening middle-class jobs.
Amazon drivers in Southern California, they’re making about $16 an hour, and they don’t stay around very long in those jobs. Back in 1996, UPS drivers in Southern California made $20.50 an hour. Right now, a full-time UPS driver in Southern California earns about $38 an hour, and health and welfare and pension and other benefits is another $29 an hour.
Everybody can recognize the unprecedented amount of money that has been generated by Amazon’s wealth and how Amazon has pushed into the transportation system and tried to dominate it. There doesn’t seem to be something good coming out of it for workers. There are a lot of bad jobs. Workers are not staying there. Workers are getting hurt at an alarming rate. At the end of the day, we’ll seek whatever opportunities for recognition that are presented to us.
Why do you think Amazon workers will be attracted to the Teamsters?
Workers have had enough. You can see there’s been a deregulation of the industry. There’s a proliferation of high turnover and exploitation of workers. Before the pandemic, nobody paid much attention to how products got to their homes. But we’re seeing a crossroads. The general public now recognizes that these jobs are very important and is seeing how these workers have been treated.
Can you discuss what the Teamsters’ strategy will be in seeking to organize Amazon workers?
We talk with thousands of Amazon workers all over this country. We could have filed to run union elections at multiple locations, well before we got up and running [with this new project]. But we see challenges with an NLRB strategy. We want people to see this industry wasn’t organized predominantly through an NLRB strategy to begin with.
The NLRB strategy is only one of many ways to seek recognition, and most important, workers have the ability to conduct concerted activities with or without a union representing them. There are lots of ways for these workers to have a voice.
As we saw in the unionization effort in Alabama, the playing field is tilted against unions when unions go the route of NLRB elections. What about using card check?
Neutrality. Card check. Those are some of the strategies. Everything is on the table. I think that our strategies to apply pressure in this industry are well documented. One thing organized labor should be smart about—and we typically are—is not to force a situation on people who aren’t ready.
We’re going to try to capture the momentum and to educate workers. Most people who go to work in a warehouse environment, they’re not aware of the unionization process to begin with, and they’re likely very new to the industry. They didn’t work at other warehouses.
A lot of people don’t understand—this isn’t us versus Amazon. This is Amazon versus workers. There is an assault on workers in this industry. We have become the natural space to advocate for workers on this. We helped regulate this industry that wasn’t regulated.
Can you be more specific about tactics and timing?
Stay tuned.
You have compared what’s happening today in the U.S. to what happened in the 1920s and 1930s. Can you explain?
The 2020s are a repeat of certain things that happened in the 1920s. The corporate giants of the day had unchecked, unfettered ability to exploit workers on the job, and they gained enormous profits as a result. It’s kind of ironic that the same things are happening today. You look at a giant like Amazon. It’s an incredibly large opponent.
A lot of people don’t understand—this isn’t us versus Amazon. This is Amazon versus workers.
But it was different for workers in the 1920s—they were up against no rules, no protections against corporations. Corporations had Pinkertons on their side. They were the ones killing people who walked off the job. Workers have a leg up today compared to what workers had to battle back then.
To my mind, it is harder to unionize Amazon than many other companies because Amazon’s employee turnover is so huge, because workers hardly have a moment to talk to each other, because the pace of work is so fast, and because Amazon tracks workers’ every movement minute by minute. How do you overcome that?
Don’t forget, all those things make workers unhappy. And don’t forget, workers do communicate with each other. They have to go home at some point. Amazon workers live in communities, and our members live in communities. We’re part of the fabric of these communities, we’re not an outside institution. We’re not a third party. We’re coaching baseball right next to that individual who works at Amazon. We’re living in the same neighborhoods. Our kids go to the same schools.
Do you have any comments about the RWDSU’s loss in Alabama?
When we interviewed Amazon workers after the election, there was something that needed to be pointed out. A larger percentage of workers stated they had problems with the working conditions. Only 30 or 33 percent stated they wanted the union to represent them. But well more than a majority expressed that they wanted to fix some things on the job. That’s a large percentage. If a large percentage of people say there is an issue, then you should discuss it with them.
Many employers might have started out tough in the beginning, but in the end, by recognizing the union and being able to talk and sit down, they work through some of these problems.
An independent union led by a fired Amazon worker, Christian Smalls, is trying to unionize Amazon’s huge warehouse on Staten Island. Do the Teamsters plan to help that effort?
We’ve spoken to them. In the union movement, there are a lot of independent unions. We’re all working together to make a difference. The number of cities where things are happening, where workers are doing things and are coming together, where community groups are helping out—we’ve partnered with a lot of the right people to bring this forward the right way.
All hands are on the oars to make this boat ride in the right direction. We do feel we’ve got a little experience in this. We’ve been in this industry for a pretty long time.
