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    Teamsters Struggle to Unionize Amazon and FedEx Delivery Workers

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    The Teamsters union has made little headway in organizing workers at Amazon and FedEx despite wage and other gains it secured at UPS last year.Last year, two unions representing workers at three large automakers and UPS negotiated new labor contracts that included big raises and other gains. Leaders of the unions — the United Automobile Workers and the Teamsters — hoped the wins would help them organize workers across their industry.The U.A.W. won one vote to unionize a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee last month and lost one this month at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama. The Teamsters have made even less progress at UPS’s big nonunion rivals in the delivery business, Amazon and FedEx.Polling shows that public support for unions is the highest it has been in decades. But labor experts said structural forces would make it hard for labor groups to increase their membership, which is the lowest it has been as a percentage of the total work force in decades. Unions also face stiff opposition from many employers and conservative political leaders.The Teamsters provide an instructive case study. Many of the workers doing deliveries for Amazon and FedEx work for contractors, typically small and medium-size businesses that can be hard to organize. And delivery workers employed directly by FedEx in its Express business are governed by a labor law that requires unions to organize all similar workers at the company nationally at once — a tougher standard than the one that applies to organizing employees at automakers, UPS and other employers.Some labor experts also said the Teamsters had not made as forceful a push as the U.A.W. to organize nonunion workers after securing a new contract with UPS.“You didn’t have that energy that you saw with the U.A.W.’s leaders,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Matt Damon, Fran Drescher and an Indian Soybean Farmer on 2024

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      What are your hopes for 2024? See how they compare with those of 11 people I put that question to. (Most of them replied by email. The people from Afghanistan and India spoke by phone.)Fran Drescher, an actress and the president of SAG-AFTRA, which staged a 118-day strike against movie and television producers this year:In 2024, I am looking forward to a sudden and essential collective human emotional growth spurt, whereby empathy becomes the main emotion that informs all behavior.Andrew Marsh, the chief executive of Plug Power, a fuel cell supplier:My hope is to see 2024 as the year we get serious about decarbonizing hard-to-abate heavy industrial manufacturing sectors. Building out a nascent U.S. hydrogen industry is essential to moving these industrial processes to carbon neutrality.Uri Levine, an entrepreneur and a co-founder of Waze:I want people to find a purpose in life. When you have a life purpose or figure out what your destiny is, your life becomes simpler, everything is clearer, and you’re happier, healthier and richer. You know what you have to do. The purpose becomes the north star to guide you. My purpose is to create value.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Elections

      Sean O'Brien, a Hoffa Critic, Claims Victory in Teamster Vote

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      The head of a Boston local who urged a more assertive stand toward employers like the United Parcel Service — and an aggressive drive to organize workers at Amazon — declared victory Thursday in his bid to lead the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.If the result is confirmed, the victory by Sean O’Brien, an international vice president of the Teamsters, would put a new imprint on the nearly 1.4 million-member union after more than two decades of leadership by James P. Hoffa, who did not seek another five-year term.The outcome appears to reflect frustration over the union’s most recent contract with UPS and a growing dissatisfaction with the tenure of Mr. Hoffa, whose father ran the union from 1957 to 1971.With about 90 percent of the ballots tallied, Mr. O’Brien had more than two-thirds of the vote in his race against Steve Vairma, a fellow international vice president who had been endorsed by Mr. Hoffa. The election was conducted by mail-in ballots that were due Monday.Mr. O’Brien, 49, railed against the contract that the union negotiated with UPS — where more than 300,000 Teamsters work — for allowing the company to create a category of employees who work on weekends and top out at a lower wage, among other perceived flaws.“If we’re negotiating concessionary contracts and we’re negotiating substandard agreements, why would any member, why would any person want to join the Teamsters union?” Mr. O’Brien said at a candidate forum in September in which he frequently tied his opponent to Mr. Hoffa.Mr. O’Brien has also criticized Mr. Hoffa’s approach to Amazon, which many in the labor movement regard as an existential threat. Although the union approved a resolution at its recent convention pledging to “supply all resources necessary” to unionize Amazon workers and eventually create a division overseeing that organizing, Mr. O’Brien said the efforts were too late. More