Workers at seven Amazon warehouses nationwide including a facility in New York City walked off the job Thursday less than a week before Christmas – and it may be just enough to disrupt the holidays for a few unlucky customers.
The strikes are taking place at seven Amazon warehouses that serve key, major metropolitan shopping markets, including Southern California; Atlanta, Georgia; Skokie, Illinois; and one major last-mile facility in Maspeth, Queens, according to the Teamsters union.
The strikes could leave the massive e-tailer scrambling to find other third-party shipping contractors just a week before the holidays, Marc Wulfraat, head of MWPVL International, a supply chain consulting firm that tracks Amazon, told The Post.
The Seattle-based e-tailing giant will likely turn to its Amazon flex drivers, who use their own vehicles to deliver packages, and other third-party delivery people, according to experts.
In the meantime, New York-area customers could suffer between a one- and three-day delivery delay – which could leave some presents stranded in warehouses on Christmas, Kenin Spivak, chairman and CEO of SMI Group, told The Post.
“Amazon contractors won’t be able to rapidly bring in other people – we’re just too close to Christmas,” Spivak said.
The Amazon strikes are reminiscent of the East Coast port strikes in October which — although they did little to disrupt the flow of goods — resulted in higher wages for port workers.
The success was due to the International Longshoremen’s Association’s sheer size and power, Spivak said.
By comparison, the Teamsters’ Amazon strikes are disjointed, limited and sporadic – and it’s unlikely they will lead to a successful contract negotiation.
Not all of Amazon’s third-party shipping contractors are participating in the strikes – not even close.
“There are 593 delivery stations that Amazon operates in the US so [seven] of them have called a strike,” Wulfraat told The Post. “That’s a relatively minor impact on Amazon’s business.”
Nevertheless, the strike is coming at the worst time of the year, so Amazon and its customers won’t skate by completely unscathed.
“Some of the third-party shippers will be paralyzed by the strike, and some won’t, so it’s the luck of the draw whether a particular customer’s package was assigned to one of those third-party shippers,” Spivak told The Post.
Third-party workers at the seven facilities on strike handle between 350,000 and 400,000 packages a day during Amazon’s peak holiday season, according to Wulfraat.
The union did not announce a strike at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, though it said rank-and-file workers at the fulfillment center voted on Friday to authorize a strike.
If workers at the Staten Island fulfillment center go on strike, the Teamsters will have a greater chance of pressuring Amazon into a new collective bargaining agreement, and the strike will likely derail more packages, Spivak said.
“The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union,” Amazon said in a statement.
“They were unable to get enough support from our employees and partners and have brought in outsiders to come and harass and intimidate our team, which is inappropriate and dangerous,” Amazon added.
Teamsters is calling it the largest strike against Amazon in US history, launched after the e-commerce giant failed to negotiate on a contract by a Dec. 15 deadline.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.
Amazon said it does not expect any impact on operations.
