Business
Amazon strike hits Southern California warehouses during holiday rush
Workers at several Amazon warehouses across the country went on strike early Thursday morning, part of an effort by the Teamsters union to pressure the e-commerce giant to recognize burgeoning unions at its facilities.
The work stoppage comes in the final stretch of the holiday shopping crush when customers are banking on Amazon to deliver last-minute gifts. The company released a statement claiming the strike would not affect its ability to deliver packages on time.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced the strike would affect seven warehouses, including three in Southern California — in Victorville, Industry and Palmdale — and one in San Francisco. It was unclear how many workers had gone onto the picket lines.
“What we’re doing is historic,” said Leah Pensler, a warehouse worker at the San Francisco facility, according to a news release from the Teamsters. “We are fighting against a vicious union-busting campaign, and we are going to win.”
Frustrations over pay and working conditions have fueled sporadic organizing efforts among workers at Amazon warehouses in recent years, and the effort has picked up speed among the company’s vast network of delivery drivers.
Cole Dunkelbarger of Chicago strikes with local Amazon truck drivers in South Gate on Aug. 4.
(Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times)
The Teamsters announced a nationwide campaign to unionize Amazon’s warehouse and delivery workers in the summer of 2021. The effort was aimed not only at growing its ranks but also protecting the wages and workplace standards of its members who work at UPS and other companies that are under competitive pressure to replicate Amazon’s methods.
In all, the Teamsters said roughly 10,000 Amazon employees and contracted workers at various Amazon facilities have pledged to affiliate with the union, a small slice of the 800,000 workers employed in Amazon’s U.S. warehouses. But the Teamsters have not held formal union elections, and the proposed bargaining units at these facilities have not been recognized by the National Labor Relations Board, which has the authority to order Amazon to come to the bargaining table.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel accused the Teamsters of falsely presenting their union as formally representing many of the Amazon employees and subcontracted drivers since they had not completed the process for recognition by the National Labor Relations Board.
“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,” Nantel said in an emailed statement. “What you see here are almost entirely outsiders — not Amazon employees or partners — and the suggestion otherwise is just another lie from the Teamsters.”
In early December, the union gave Amazon a deadline to come to the bargaining table. The union said Amazon’s refusal to meet its demand to negotiate a labor agreement set the strike in motion.
The strike, which includes workers at warehouses in New York, Atlanta and other cities, is the largest labor action to date against Amazon, the union said.
“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,” said Teamsters President Sean M. O’Brien, according to the news release.
Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of Cornell University’s Worker Institute, said the walkouts were an opportunity for the Teamsters to demonstrate the depth of support for unionizing in warehouses and to draw in more workers.
She said that because Amazon is a large employer with a vast network, potential disruptions would be limited. Nonetheless, she said, “it’s a time when Amazon would like to shine and not have distractions. It’s a moment of high leverage for workers.”
The e-commerce giant has waged a long, largely successful battle to discourage unionization efforts at its facilities, and has been accused repeatedly of engaging in anti-union tactics in violation of federal law — accusations the company denies.
The federal labor board has ordered a union election by workers at an Alabama warehouse to be repeated several times because of allegations of interference by Amazon.
In 2022, Amazon Labor Union, an independent labor group, won a watershed union election at the JFK8 facility on Staten Island in New York — the first successful unionization effort at any of the company’s U.S. warehouses. The union, however, struggled to secure other wins, losing an election at the neighboring facility and another in Albany soon after.
Amazon Labor Union helped Amazon workers at a fulfillment center in California’s Moreno Valley to launch a union drive at the facility in 2022, but the effort stalled soon after with the group withdrawing the election petition it filed with the National Labor Relations Board.
After being hampered by internal division, Amazon Labor Union agreed to affiliate with the Teamsters, which provided more stable financial footing and resources.
The labor push received a boost this year from the NLRB, which has called into question Amazon’s model of relying on a network of independent companies to employ tens of thousands of delivery drivers. An initial ruling this summer by an NLRB regional director in Los Angeles determined that Amazon was a “joint employer” of drivers who delivered packages out of the company’s Palmdale warehouse. After that decision, the NLRB office in Atlanta determined Amazon should be held liable for allegedly making threats and other unlawful statements to drivers seeking to unionize in the city.
Business
Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
Business
Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
Business
How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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