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.

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Libby Rainey

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LAist

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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."