The Teamsters have a long and proud history of standing up to corporate power, and their campaign to organize Amazon workers produced a long-overdue confrontation last week in Riverside, Calif., after the company refused to recognize the workers’ choice.
The protest at Amazon’s facility has followed a familiar and lawful union playbook. First, the union demonstrated that Amazon workers had signed cards showing support for the union. Then the workers demanded that Amazon bargain in good faith — a step Amazon has every incentive to delay because the company knows it would lose a fair vote. The cards were the workers’ choice; the absence of an election was Amazon’s.
When Amazon refused to bargain, the workers correctly identified the company’s behavior for what it was — an unfair labor practice. Last Wednesday they launched a one-day unfair labor practice strike, the only lever they had left. Their supporters, many not on Amazon’s payroll — which is the entire point of the strike — joined them in picketing and blocking vehicles from entering and exiting the facility.
Amazon notified the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department several times throughout the day of “hostile acts by the picketers and blocking the ingress and egress of the site.” Law enforcement declined to respond — until Amazon’s refusal to bargain produced exactly the confrontation the company wanted.
Video footage shows the workers maintaining their blockade while a contractor tried to bypass it on a motorcycle. The rider circled around and crashed, knocking down two strikers. What followed was a brawl — ugly, unnecessary, and a direct consequence of Amazon’s refusal to bargain. Teamsters beat the rider as he lay on the ground — a confrontation Amazon had engineered by refusing to recognize the workers’ chosen union.
The motorcyclist and the two strikers who were knocked down were hospitalized. It may have been imprudent for the contractor to try to drive through the picket line, but he was trying to make a living by showing up for his job — the same right Amazon’s warehouse workers are trying to exercise. Neither set of workers is the enemy of the other. Amazon is, by refusing to recognize the workers’ choice and forcing the fight into the street.
The Teamsters rightly point out that joining a union improves worker safety — exactly the protection Amazon denies the people who work in its warehouses. The confrontation in Riverside is the predictable result of denying workers a seat at the table for years. The company’s argument that worker organizing causes the hazard is the same line Amazon uses to justify blocking every union drive.
The Teamsters, not Amazon, are the ones being victimized here. The workers have a moral claim on Amazon to recognize a majority that wants representation, even where the law still allows delay. Under federal labor law, a union can request recognition if a majority of workers sign cards showing support. The Teamsters say they have those signatures in hand but have not yet handed them to Amazon — they know Amazon will use every legal maneuver to run out the clock even after the cards are presented. Every day of delay is a delay Amazon pockets. The law, written by the donor class’s allies, permits plenty of that.
The Teamsters correctly cite the Biden NLRB’s Cemex decision (2023), which held that if an employer refuses to recognize a union based on card-check signatures, the employer must promptly petition the NLRB for an election. If the employer doesn’t, the NLRB can order it to bargain. The Cemex decision was designed to make this kind of Amazon-style standoff impossible — a sensible protection of worker choice. The Trump NLRB hasn’t enforced Cemex at the Riverside facility, leaving the workers the agency is supposed to protect without remedy.
The Senate last month confirmed a third Republican member to the NLRB, giving them a 3-1 majority. Reversing Cemex will now be at the top of the agency’s agenda — and giving Amazon the law’s full protection is exactly what the donor class paid for. The Trump NLRB’s refusal to enforce Cemex is the real thuggery here — and it is happening in plain sight.
