The Brief

An effort to unionize Amazon’s delivery drivers faces an unusual initial challenge: they don't work for Amazon.

Sure, the drivers wear Amazon-labeled uniforms. They also drive the Amazon-branded vehicles that seem to populate every street corner, especially during the holiday season. But much of Amazon's last-mile delivery system is subcontracted to a web of smaller businesses called delivery service partners.

It's a setup that some drivers in Southern California say is a sham.

"Amazon ultimately calls the shots," said Daniel Herrera, a driver in Victorville. "They're the ones that put our routes out."

Those drivers are challenging Amazon's business model through an ongoing union drive with the Teamsters — one of the nation's largest and most powerful labor unions. It started more than a year ago in Palmdale, when a group of drivers for one Delivery Service Partner announced they planned to form a union. More recently, drivers in Victorville and the city of Industry have joined the cause.

These union efforts are setting up a larger legal battle: Amazon says these drivers are not their employees. The Teamsters say Amazon is their joint employer, which would mean the tech giant has to bargain with the workers accordingly.

That allegation got a boost in late September, when the National Labor Relations Board's Los Angeles region issued a complaint naming Amazon as a joint employer of its delivery drivers in Palmdale. Amazon denied the claim.

“As we’ve said all along, there is no merit to any of these claims. We look forward to showing that as the legal process continues and expect the few remaining allegations will be dismissed as well," Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards said in a statement.

What’s a Delivery Service Partner?

Subcontracted small businesses make up a substantial part of Amazon's logistics web. Over the past five years, some 390,000 people have driven for delivery service partners across 19 countries, according to Amazon.

"While DSPs as independent businesses hire and manage their own employees, they receive support from Amazon to help them be successful," Amazon's website states.

Amazon drivers work for third party small business called delivery service partners. But some of them say that Amazon should be considered their employer.

(

Libby Rainey

/

LAist

)

Amazon technology creates driver routes, and Amazon says that all its company-branded vehicles all have "in-vehicle camera safety technology." It's dynamics like these that have led the Teamsters and others to say Amazon is the drivers' true boss.

"It's set up and modeled so that it can control the delivery services, yet pretend that it's not controlling the delivery services," said Catherine Creighton with Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. "It wants one, [to] avoid liability if there are accidents or problems with the delivery system. And No. 2, avoid a unionized workforce."

When 84 drivers in Palmdale announced they had reached a contract agreement with a Delivery Service Partner last year, it was the beginning of the fight at the National Labor Relations Board over Amazon's employer status.

"These workers in Palmdale demanded that Amazon recognize them as drivers and demanded that Amazon come to the table, because clearly Amazon has so much control over these operations," said Randy Korgan, director of the Teamsters' Amazon division.

Around the same time, Amazon canceled its contract with that subcontractor and the drivers lost their jobs. But it also sparked a wider organizing drive. While the Teamsters filed unfair labor charges with the NLRB, drivers picketed at the Palmdale facility and other Amazon hubs.

It was one of those demonstrations that caught the attention of Vanessa Valdez, a driver at an Amazon delivery center in the City of Industry.

"I remember [them saying] 'You deserve more…Are you tired of this?'" Valdez said.

This fall, drivers at four delivery service partners at a Victorville Amazon facility and two at a City of Industry location signed union cards with the Teamsters and demanded union recognition.

"The truth is that there are multiple independent small businesses that deliver on our behalf from these facilities, and none of them are Amazon employees,” Amazon's spokesperson said in response.

Delivering Amazon packages

Drivers who have joined the union drive say they want to negotiate with Amazon over crushing quotas, broken down vans and pay.

"We skip our 15 minute breaks because the quantity is so high," said Rubie Wiggins, another driver in the City of Industry who said she wants more drivers to unionize. "You're constantly at a battle with yourself."

Multiple drivers in Los Angeles report not having the time or space to use the bathroom while delivering packages.

Labor relations under Trump

A hearing on the Palmdale charges is scheduled for March, and the dispute is likely to continue to wind through the courts after that, according to Catherine Creighton at Cornell.

By then, the Teamsters will face a changed landscape at the national level with President-elect Donald Trump returning to the White House.

Trump can remove NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo when he takes office, and whether the five-member board will have a Republican or Democratic majority is up in the air. That leaves in question the fate of rulings during President Joe Biden's tenure that boosted labor protections, including one expanding the definition of a joint employer that was blocked by a federal judge earlier this year.

Organizing battle ahead

While the legal dispute with Amazon continues to play out, the Teamsters have made it clear they'll continue to organize more drivers.

Veena Dubal, a professor of law at UC Irvine, says it's an organizing strategy that plays the long game.

"It's about creating conversations with the delivery service providers themselves, creating conversations with the workers so that they see their boss as being Amazon and not the DSP," Dubal said. "And using these legal mechanisms, even if they're not immediately successful, to change how people think about it."

It’s been four years since James Oreste started Ubefest, a festival meant to highlight the purple yam that’s become beloved not just in the Filipino diaspora but across the country. In that time, the food festival has grown in the number of vendors and become a broader appreciation of Filipino cuisine.

The restaurant:

This year's event is happening Saturday April 11 and Sunday April 12 in Cerritos. One of the festival’s vendors, Emerson Baja, owner of Long Beach Lumpia, has been involved with the event for years, and he came into the studio to talk to host Austin Cross.

The food:

Baja’s pop-up menu was inspired by a variety of things, with the traditional aspects of his menu coming from his family and other aspects by food he experimented with while attending Long Beach State. He became a probation officer after he graduated college, but his heart was always with food, specifically lumpia, which he served at a potluck.

“People were like ‘you’re in the wrong business,’” Baja said.

For the segment, Baja brought in a variety of lumpias: traditional Shanghai; pork chile verde; veggie pancit pizza; and ube cheesecake turon.

The verdict: 

When Emerson mentioned the Shanghai lumpia being a homemade recipe, Cross added, “Home is delicious! You have a home like this?”

“It’s finger-licking good over here,” Cross said after his first bite of the ube cheesecake turon lumpia. He added: “It’s really special because it has an aftertaste of a very heartwarming pastry…feels very homey.”

Listen to the full conversation here:

President Donald Trump has endorsed Steve Hilton for California governor, a move that could possibly consolidate Republican voters ahead of the still wide-open primary election in June.

Hilton, a former Fox News host based in the Bay Area who previously served as a political adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron, has campaigned on the goal of improving California’s hostile relationship with the federal administration. He and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco are the only two Republicans among the 10 notable candidates in the primary field.

“I have known and respected Steve Hilton, who is running for Governor of California, for many years. He is a truly fine man, one who has watched as this once great State has gone to Hell,” Trump wrote early Monday on his social media site, Truth Social. “Steve Hilton has my COMPLETE & TOTAL ENDORSEMENT. He will be a GREAT Governor and, importantly, WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!!!”

With Democratic voters split, Hilton and Bianco have risen to the top of public polling in the race, threatening to leave the majority party in the state without a candidate in the top-two general election. Now, Trump’s endorsement could boost Hilton and allow a Democrat to overtake Bianco.

“It certainly increases the chances that a Democrat is going to make it into the top two,” said Tim Rosales, a Republican strategist. “The Bianco campaign has to reassess and reposition themselves in the wake of this, but the Democrats still don’t have a clear front-runner.”

In the most recent public polling, Hilton and Bianco have occupied a crowded top five alongside three Democrats: Rep. Eric Swalwell, investor Tom Steyer and former Rep. Katie Porter.

Hilton and Bianco often split the Republican Party’s support about evenly in polling, and a March primary election simulator created by Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., put the odds of a Republican-only general election at about 25%.

If that were the case, the state would have a Republican governor for the first time in more than two decades.

In an interview with KQED’s Political Breakdown, Hilton touted his relationship with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and vowed to work collaboratively with the Trump administration to boost California’s timber industry and manage forests.

“There’s a whole set of positive things we can do if we work more closely with the federal government on that issue,” he said.

While he told Politico that as of last week, he hadn’t spoken to Trump about the gubernatorial race, he’s repeatedly invoked the president’s own campaign slogan, saying that as governor, he would “Make California Great Again.”

Trump remains deeply unpopular in California, with just 30% of likely voters approving of the job he is doing as president, per a February poll from the Public Policy Institute of California. But that same survey found Trump’s support remains strong among California Republicans, with 76% approval.

“Republican voters still hold the president in pretty high regard,” Rosales said. “It certainly does make Hilton the front-runner amongst Republicans, and in a top-two primary like this, where you’ve got a crowded field, anything that a candidate can do that really solidifies a base of voters is critically important.”

The loyalty of the GOP base has allowed Trump to play kingmaker in past California primary elections. In 2018, he endorsed businessman John Cox, boosting Cox into the general election and dashing the prospects of an all-Democrat general election between Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Before Trump’s overnight endorsement, Bianco also seemed to have been courting the president’s support, launching a high-profile recount of ballots cast in last November’s special election, when California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50 to redraw congressional maps to favor Democrats. Last month, Bianco seized more than 650,000 ballots, calling the unprecedented investigation a “fact-finding mission” into potential voter fraud, which Trump has often called rampant despite a lack of evidence.

Many Republican strategists, however, believed that the party’s best chance to win both spots in the primary relied on Trump’s staying out of it. The state’s GOP also hasn’t weighed in, though it’s expected to decide whether to make an endorsement at its upcoming convention next weekend.

Now that celebrity bald eagles Jackie and Shadow have welcomed two new chicks, tens of thousands of fans are regularly tuning into the livestream of the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake for a peak at the fuzzy eaglets.

The chicks, which hatched Saturday night and Easter Sunday morning, will be referred to as Chick 1 and Chick 2 for now, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs the popular YouTube livestream.

The eaglets are still gaining strength in their first few days of life — learning to move neck muscles and pick up pieces of meat from mama Jackie and papa Shadow’s beaks. Those early feedings can be challenging or awkward, and the organization often refers to the chicks as “bobbleheads” at this stage.

Some fans worried about the second chick struggling to hold its head and getting enough food, but both eaglets are doing “great,” according to Jenny Voisard, Friends of Big Bear Valley’s media manager.

“Trust the process, trust the eagles, and settle in and enjoy these cute little fur balls because they change every day,” Voisard said. “And you don't want to miss this time, because they're just so precious.”

Sibling 'bonking'

The eaglets are tiny — each weighs about a few ounces — in a nest that’s estimated to be 6-feet deep. The nest sits near the top of a Jeffrey pine tree on the north side of Big Bear Lake.

Chicks multiply in size over the first weeks and months of life, establishing a pecking order along the way, according to the nonprofit.

Viewers may notice Chick 1 and Chick 2 headbutting each other, a sibling rivalry behavior that the organization calls “bonking.” Voisard said it’s “totally normal” in the nest, especially since the chicks can’t see very well at this stage.

“It won't last too long,” she said. “There is plenty of food for them to eat, and so they shouldn't be in competition with each other.”

Last season’s trio of chicks participated in bonking for a while.

Voisard said Sunny and Gizmo went on to be “best friends” before they flew away from the nest last June. One of last season’s chicks, which the nonprofit named “Misty,” didn’t survive a winter storm within weeks of hatching.

For Jackie and Shadow, everything now revolves around stocking up food and making sure the chicks are safe, warm and dry in the nest, Voisard said.

“They do a very good job, and we've been seeing fish deliveries and other prey the last couple of days and the chicks are hungrily gobbling it up,” she said.

Upcoming naming contest

Now that the chicks have hatched, many people are wondering what their names will be — and offering suggestions. The nonprofit said it’s seen hundreds of requests to name one of the chicks “Sandy” in honor of Sandy Steers.

Steers was an environmental advocate who helped launch the eagle livestream and the late executive director of Friends of Big Bear Valley. She died in February, a few weeks before the pair of eggs were laid.

But the organization said that’s not what Steers would have wanted. Voisard said Steers loved having Big Bear third-grade students select the eaglets’ names, and Friends of Big Bear Valley plans to keep the tradition going.

“We are working on a way to honor, memorialize Sandy in something that’s more permanent,” Voisard said.

The naming privileges are usually given to the third-graders because they study bald eagles in school, but last year was a bit of an exception. The fourth- and fifth -grade classes were invited to help select names because Jackie and Shadow didn’t have chicks in 2023 and 2024, when the students would've been in third-grade.

"We want to make sure we're doing it the way that [Steers] wanted to do it, and those kids live for being able to do this,” Voisard said. “It's a right of passage.”

Friends of Big Bear Valley is expected to launch a naming contest where the public can submit ideas for this season’s eaglets, and the details will be announced online. A random list of names will be pulled from the submissions and shared with Big Bear third-grade students for the final vote.

Chick 1 and Chick 2 will then be officially named based on the results of the students’ ballots.