Those Drivers Delivering Your Packages Do Not Work for Amazon
When they join the Teamsters union like over 200 workers did, the company is not going to hear their demands. Just like it has not negotiated a fair contract for the sole union in Staten Island.
Step outside on any given day, and you are likely to cross paths with an Amazon truck idling on a street corner. An Amazon delivery driver — that kinetic being clad in inky shades of blue and grey, always hustling to-and-fro with a package and tablet in hand — is somewhere near, but never for long. He will deliver 41 packages1 within the hour, responsible for items that American households are waiting for, like magic, to show up at their doors.
But this delivery driver is not an Amazon worker at all. Not technically. He may drive an Amazon truck, wear the Amazon uniform and deliver Amazon packages, but he works for a third-party “Delivery Service Partner.” By employing this subcontractor model, Amazon does not claim these drivers as employees, evading responsibility for providing them with safe delivery conditions. When these third-party workers unionize, Amazon can wash its hands of their organizing efforts and say, “not mine.” This is exactly what the company has done.
On Dec. 10, over 200 drivers at Amazon’s DBK1 facility in Queens marched outside of the warehouse and joined the Teamsters Local 804 union. While the subtracted drivers joining the Teamsters is a step in the right direction for workers collectivizing power against Amazon and demanding better working conditions — like properly managed vehicles, drivers having a say in the package quotas and routes Amazon sets — it is nothing but a symbolic move against Amazon.
The company has shown how expendable it views the workers who deliver its packages by retaliating against drivers who went on strike at another Queens facility last December. Amazon fired 150 of the drivers who had joined the Teamsters in a precreding headline-grabbing protest; just as the company has fired employees for union organizing.
Until workers and lawmakers force the company to recognize its delivery drivers as direct employees, Amazon is not feeling any heat. For now, these workers are stuck in a limbo state without worker protections from Amazon and unable to demand them without the $2 trillion company as their liable employer.
There is local legislation that could diminish Amazon’s upper hand. The Delivery Protection Act (Int.1396) would ban the third-party model for delivery services across New York City and set training, safety and employment requirements all delivery facilities must adhere to. Sponsored by Councilmember Tiffany Cabán alongside 40 co-sponsors, the bill has overwhelming support in the 51-member City Council. Speaker Adrienne Adams should hold a hearing on this bill that protects workers so the committee can vote on a final version of the bill.
Unionized Warehouse Workers Still Without a Contract
For unionized workers who are directly employed by Amazon, Amazon has refused to come to the negotiating table for a contract.
It has been over three years since Amazon workers at the Staten Island JFK8 warehouse voted to form the independent Amazon Labor Union, defying odds set against them by their employer, which spent $4.2 million on union-busting efforts. The Staten Island warehouse is the extraordinary case in the push to unionize the company: it remains the sole unionized warehouse across 180 centers in the U.S. All other union votes in warehouses have failed.
The grassroots union joined the Teamsters in June 2024 amidst infighting and dwindling funds, gaining access to the well of financial and legal resources at the Teamsters’ disposal. But the union is still without a contract despite the consolidation. The contract is what workers fight for when they fight for a union. It secures their dignity and protections, setting agreed-upon conditions of employment, including wages, benefits and hours of work.
Amazon immediately challenged the successful vote but failed, and federal regulators ordered the company to the bargaining table in 2023. Still, the company has not formally recognized the union representing over 8,000 employees nor agreed to collective bargaining. U.S. labor law does not force companies to reach a contract deal with unions — only to bargain in “good faith” with them. Less than 50% of new unions settle on a contract with employers within 18 months of unionization, and megacorporations like Amazon have the wherewithal to drag out contract negotiations for years, wielding the legal process to challenge the union vote and stave off bargaining. The same failure to reach a contract is playing out for Starbucks employees in Buffalo, who are without a contract four years after becoming the first location to unionize in 2021.
As the late union organizer Jane McAlevey said, workers must figure out how to “create a crisis for [their] employer that brings them to their knees.”
McAlevey engendered such a crisis to secure a contract negotiation for nurses in Pennsylvania. She fought on behalf of the Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals when their employer filed legal charges to get the union election thrown out. The stalwart union organizer obtained a supermajority of nurses to sign a petition acknowledging the union and demanding their employer drop the legal charges and start negotiating. This was still not enough to get the employer to the bargaining table. It took McAlevey and the nurses leveraging Hillary Clinton’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention. They threatened to stand outside the convention and strike in uniform, and this is what it took for the nurses to get their employer to come to the table and negotiate. When up against giants like Starbucks and Amazon, it will take mobilized collective workers using every tool at their disposal to force their hand through a crisis they cannot ignore, as McAlevey did.
Despite surges in labor activism at Starbucks and Amazon, union membership has been in decline for decades; only 6% of private sector employees are in unions, compared to 33% in the 1950s. But most U.S. adults say a decline in the amount of workers represented by unions is bad for the country, and union activity, like the demonstration led by Queens delivery drivers, indicates a desire for union representation that can grant them the dignity and respect for their lives they deserve.
We need to be real about where we are. When I read headlines about delivery drivers for Amazon signing the Teamsters membership cards, or Starbucks workers taking a stand at the picket line, I am tempted to let this twinkle of righteous action carry me to a fairyland, where conditions for the U.S. working class are changing for the better. But we should not be clouded by this idealism and believe that these acts of protest mean more than they do. Yet employees are standing up in the face of this, and their outcries are bringing others into the fight. Workers who fought with gritted teeth for unionization in the face of megacorporations, and all workers who continue to do so, deserve a swift, fair labor deal. We need to turn up the heat, make the goliaths sweat.
From Capital One Shopping Research’s “Amazon Logistics Statistics” updated on July 23, 2025.