He said Mr. O’Brien’s critique of the union’s efforts on Amazon was unfair. “No one was doing it a decade ago,” Mr. Hoffa said. “It’s more complex than just going out and organizing 20 people at a grocery store. He sounds like it’s so simple.”
Mr. O’Brien did not elaborate on his own plans for organizing Amazon, saying he wanted to solicit more input from Teamsters locals, but suggested that they would include bringing political and economic pressure to bear on the company in cities and towns around the country. The union has taken part in efforts to deny Amazon a tax abatement in Indiana and to reject a delivery station in Colorado.
Mr. O’Brien, who once worked as a rigger, transporting heavy equipment to construction sites, was elected president of a large Boston local in 2006. Within a few years, he appeared to be ensconced in the union’s establishment wing.
In a 2013 incident that led to a 14-day unpaid suspension, Mr. O’Brien threatened members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a reform group, who were taking on an ally of his in Rhode Island. “They’ll never be our friends,” he said of the challengers. “They need to be punished.”
Mr. O’Brien has apologized for the comments and points out that the reform advocate who led the challenge in Rhode Island, Matt Taibi, is now a supporter who ran on his slate in the recent election.
The break with Mr. Hoffa came in 2017. Early that year, the longtime Teamsters president appointed Mr. O’Brien to a position whose responsibilities included overseeing the union’s contract negotiation with UPS, where more than 300,000 Teamsters now work.
Understand Amazon’s Employment System
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Employee churn is high. The company conducted a hiring surge in 2020, signing up 350,000 workers in three months offering a minimum wage of $15 an hour and good benefits. But even before the pandemic, Amazon was losing about 3 percent of its hourly associates each week — meaning its turnover was roughly 150 percent a year.
Buggy systems caused awful mistakes. Amazon’s disability and leave system was a source of frustration and panic. Workers who had applied for leaves were penalized for missing work, triggering job-abandonment notices and then terminations.
Strict monitoring has created a culture of fear. The company tracks workers’ every movement inside its warehouses. Employees who work too slowly, or are idle for too long, risk being fired. The system was designed to identify impediments for workers. Though such firings are rare, some executives worry that the metrics are creating an anxious, negative environment.
There is rising concern over racial inequity. The retail giant is largely powered by employees of color. According to internal records from 2019, more than 60 percent of associates at JFK8 are Black or Latino. The records show Black associates at the warehouse were almost 50 percent more likely to be fired than their white peers.
Read more: The Amazon That Customers Don’t See.
But the union relieved Mr. O’Brien of his position several months later, after he had sought to include critics of Mr. Hoffa on the bargaining team, including the head of a large Louisville local who had narrowly lost the Teamsters presidency to Mr. Hoffa in the previous election despite being considered a long shot.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/business/economy/teamsters-sean-obrien-hoffa.html
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