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Tens of thousands of Amazon and Starbucks workers have gone on strike this week, only days out from Christmas Day.

The first strike began Thursday, with thousands of Amazon delivery drivers from seven key Amazon facilities hitting the streets to voice their displeasure over their pay and working conditions:

According to the union leading the strike, Amazon has repeatedly refused to bargain with the disgruntled drivers. But according to Amazon, there’s a valid reason for this — the drivers don’t directly work for them.

“The drivers are employees of companies that Amazon uses to deliver packages to customers,” the New York Times notes. “Amazon has said it has no obligation to bargain with the drivers because they are not its employees.”

But because Amazon effectively controls their working conditions, the drivers disagree.

“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed,” Teamsters general president Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement. “We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it.”

“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.

“What you see here are almost entirely outsiders — not Amazon employees or partners — and the suggestion otherwise is just another lie from the Teamsters,” Amazon said in a counter-statement.

“The truth is that they were unable to get enough support from our employees and partners and have brought in outsiders to come and harass and intimidate our team,” the company added.

The good news is the strike isn’t expected to affect Christmas deliveries.

“The company has hundreds of delivery hubs across the country and 10 or more in some of the largest urban areas. It has said that if one delivery hub experiences delays or driver shortages, the company can seamlessly shift packages to another hub nearby,” the Times notes.

The second strike began Friday, with thousands of Starbucks workers going on strike in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle that morning, but many more workers are expected to join up in the upcoming days.

“Workers United, which has a bargaining delegation that represents workers at 525 Starbucks stores in the United States, said walkouts are expected to spread each day and reach hundreds of stores from coast to coast by Christmas Eve unless Starbucks (SBUX) and the union reach a collective bargaining agreement,” according to CNN.

In February, the union and Starbucks reportedly established a “framework” for collective bargaining. But according to Workers United, Amazon has done virtually nothing since then to move forward with the actual bargaining:

Yet the Starbucks workers have in fact been granted a few additional new perks since the discussions began, including an expansion of paid parental leave.

“We are more than doubling paid parental leave for our U.S. store partners who work an average of 20 hours a week or more,” Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol announced just this past Monday.

“Birth parents will receive up to 18 weeks of fully paid leave, and non-birth parents will receive up to 12 weeks of leave at full pay,” he added.

This comes after Niccol penned a letter to the union in September pledging that he was “committed to making sure we engage constructively and in good faith” regarding negotiations.

But evidently, all this hasn’t been enough.

“Our C.E.O. Brian doesn’t know what it’s like to preside over the company while it’s fighting with us,” Starbucks barista and bargaining delegate Silvia Baldwin reportedly said on a call open to supporters this Thursday. “It was pretty clear very quickly that we were going to have to remind him or teach him what that looks like.”

Vivek Saxena
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