The Teamsters union announced a strike against Amazon on Thursday morning, with workers joining picket lines in four states in what they claim is the largest strike against the delivery giant in history.
The strike comes just one week before Christmas, amid the rush of last-minute holiday gift deliveries.
The strike started at 6 a.m. ET Thursday with workers at a facility in New York City, a facility in Atlanta, three facilities in Southern California, one in San Francisco and one in Skokie, Illinois, just outside Chicago.
Amazon Teamsters at the warehouse in Staten Island, New York, said Friday that they would be joining the strike at midnight Saturday.
The Teamsters said in a news release Thursday that nearly 10,000 Amazon workers have joined the union. That’s just a small fraction of the 1.5 million people employed by the $2 trillion tech and retail empire.
The union said in the release that Amazon “ignored” the deadline of Sunday it had set to come to the bargaining table.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.
“These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible. Instead, they’ve pushed workers to the limit and now they’re paying the price. This strike is on them,” he added.
Amazon rebutted the union’s claims.
“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,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement.
Nantel alleged that the Teamsters have tried to threaten and 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.”
Amazon said that its employees have the choice to join a union if they wish and that it already offers competitive pay, health benefits and opportunities for growth — all points that many unions are requesting.
About 50 demonstrators were at the fulfillment center in City of Industry, east of Los Angeles, on Thursday, but only about half of them were wearing Amazon uniforms. The rest were Teamsters members there to support.
All of the people NBC News spoke with who said they do work for Amazon said they are drivers who work for third-party agencies that contract with Amazon.
They said they consider themselves Amazon employees, though, because, as delivery driver Alfred Munoz put it, “they control our routes. They control how many packages we deliver.”
Munoz also said the company requires them to wear the Amazon uniforms.
Another delivery driver, Julio Fuentes, said he drives about 200 miles a day and makes 200 stops.
“It’s just way too much,” he said.
In Alpharetta, Georgia, there were about 25 demonstrators — almost all of whom said they were Amazon employees — at the day's peak. There were also representatives from UPS Teamsters and two people from an unrelated union.
NBC News spoke with about 10 workers, who all said they were delivery drivers who would otherwise be working Thursday. They also said they were all employed by a third party.
The Teamsters did not immediately respond to a request to confirm the number of striking workers in Georgia.
The demonsrators said about 1,000 drivers are regularly dispatched from the Alpharetta location, about 50 or 60 of whom it said are in the union.
While many of the workers were vague when they were asked what their demands were — higher pay and better working conditions — others said it felt like they were putting their bodies on the line delivering packages and should be compensated fairly for it.