SKOKIE (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - Less than a week before Christmas, the Teamsters have gone on strike at Amazon facilities across the country.
Delivery drivers were seen Thursday morning marching in the cold as semis roll into this distribution facility on Howard, shouting things like “Amazon Prime…white collar crime.” Amazon Teamsters at seven facilities, including Skokie, Illinois; New York City, Atlanta, San Francisco and Southern California, are participating in the "largest strike" against the trillion-dollar company in American history, the union said in a press release.
Driver Luke Cianciotto in Skokie said employees forced to choose between being safe and being fast.
“You have 500 plus packages on your truck in any given day…You got to move fast in order to deliver those packages, but they also have 5,000 different quantified measures and statistics for safety, so you’re compromising one of those things at any given time,” Cianciotto said.
The Teamsters accuse Amazon of refusing to negotiate with them and recognize their union.
Another driver told WBBM Newsradio in Chicago customers who may be waiting on Christmas gifts should try and help them put people over profits.
For its part, the company said the union is inflating how many workers it represents and coercing employees and third party drivers to join them.
"For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative," company spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement to Fox Business. "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."