'Groundbreaking' Win as NLRB Rules Amazon Must Bargain With Delivery Drivers

A decision by the National Labor Relations Board on Thursday marked "the beginning of the end for Amazon's favorite legal loophole," said one grassroots labor group, as the board ruled that Amazon is a joint employer of its drivers—making it legally required to recognize and bargain with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union that represents dozens of the delivery workers.

The NLRB concluded its investigation that began more than a year ago, when 84 Amazon workers at the company's Palmdale, California warehouse joined the Teamsters Local 396 union, negotiating a contract with Amazon's Delivery Service Partner (DSP), a subcontractor which Amazon claimed was the drivers' employer.

"Despite wielding absolute control over the drivers' terms and conditions of employment," said the Teamsters in a statement on Thursday, "Amazon maintained that it did not employ the workers and refused to recognize or negotiate with the Teamsters."

Through its investigation, the NLRB found Amazon had unlawfully refused to recognize the workers' decision to unionize, threatened employees with job loss, held illegal captive audience meetings where managers spread anti-union misinformation, and intimidated workers.

The NLRB is expected to prosecute Amazon "before an NLRB judge for its serious and callous violations of workers' rights."

The ruling comes less than a year after the NLRB finalized its joint-employer rule, establishing that two or more entities can be considered joint employers of a group of employees if they both have employment relationship with the workers and help to determine their terms and conditions of employment.

That ruling and the decision announced on Thursday, said the Teamsters, "shatters [the] myth" that Amazon is not the Palmdale workers' employer even as it "exercises widespread control over drivers' labor and working conditions."

One driver called the decision a "groundbreaking ruling."

"Amazon is our joint employer," he said in a video posted to social media. "Why? Because the whole world knows who our true employer is... We wear their colors, drive their vans, and yet, we're not their employees? How does that make sense?"

With the ruling, said Athena, a grassroots coalition of Amazon workers, the NLRB has told the company that "it can't game the system anymore when its comes to drivers."

"Lots of Amazon's wealth was build by gaming tax laws, employment laws, public subsidies, lax privacy laws, unenforced antitrust laws, etc.—we all let it go on too long, but not anymore," said the group.