Teamsters union leaders and members are picketing outside an Amazon facility in Imperial Thursday morning. NewsRadio KDKA's Timira Rush was in Imperial.
Local union workers are outside the Pittsburgh-based Amazon facility and Kevin Schmidt, the head of Local Teamsters 249 tells KDKA Radio they hit the picket line Thursday morning in solidary with workers across the country.”
“We’re here because we have organized over 9,000 Amazon workers across the country and over 20 facilities and Amazon is just refusing to acknowledge it and sit down and bargain at all, let alone in good faith,” said Schmidt. “So, today, across the county, there were strategic building picked out and this is one of them and we’re putting up picket lines, the ball’s in Amazon’s court.”
Schmidt adds it’s not just the teamsters, they’re also part of the AFL-CIO, the largest labor organization in the world and they’re coming together to fight, what they call, corporate greed.
An Amazon spokesperson the Teamsters claim they represent thousands of Amazon employees but they don't and are pushing a false narrative.
Workers at seven Amazon facilities went on strike Thursday, an effort by the Teamsters to pressure the e-commerce company for a labor agreement during a key shopping period.
The Teamsters say the workers, who authorized strikes in the past few days, are joining the picket line after Amazon ignored a Sunday deadline the union set for contract negotiations. Amazon says it doesn’t expect an impact on its operations during what the union calls the largest strike against the company in U.S. history.
The strike could delay some packages, but how big the impact could be is not yet known.
Amazon says it doesn’t expect an impact on its operations. The Teamsters say they represent nearly 10,000 workers at ten Amazon facilities. Amazon employs 1.5 million people in its warehouses and corporate offices.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Related
