By Oren Kadosh, LNS Network Organizer
Some of the most exciting organizing in the country is happening at Amazon warehouses, airhubs, and delivery depots around the country. From New York to California, to Kentucky, Georgia, and Illinois, courageous and fed up Amazon workers are engaged in a mass public escalation of their union campaigns with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters that in some cases have been several years in the making. At the time this newsletter is published, we will be past the deadline that Amazon Teamsters have given to Amazon to recognize and start bargaining with the unionizing workers or face even further escalations, including potential coordinated workplace action against Unfair Labor Practices.
Climate and sustainability has become a central plank for core sets of these workers. Recently, 100 Amazon workers at a critical Amazon airhub location, KSBD in San Bernardino, California, organized a march on the boss against the workplace impacts of massive, climate-fueled wildfires that had engulfed much of the State. The workers forced a two-day closure with pay and the right to leave work early or work indoors if they felt unsafe thereafter. Learning their power against the boss and for climate resilience to win concrete demands emboldened the organizing where now a majority of the over 1,000 KSBD workers have decided to form a union.
Meanwhile, in the Midwest, Amazon delivery drivers from Skokie, IL organizing with the Teamsters joined Indigenous and environmental justice organizers, union autoworkers, and transit organizers on a week-long expedition touring proposed lithium mining sites in Nevada, “ground zero” for U.S. mining of energy transition minerals. With crucial help from organizer Zhenya Polozova at the Warehouse Workers for Justice and the Midwest Amazon Teamsters, Skokie worker-leaders able to build deep solidarity with those on a critical pole of the frontlines of their fleet transition. This organizing work continues with strategy sessions being held to brainstorm effective ways to fight for a just transition across the transportation sector supply chain, away from fossil fuels, but without throwing other impacted communities under the bus.