A decision handed down in the final days of 2025 in the ongoing dance among Amazon, the Teamsters and a now-closed Direct Service Provider (DSP) is another development in the union-driven effort to organize the drivers who deliver parcels to homes and businesses.
It also is the key ongoing legal process on the question of whether Amazon is a joint employer with its DSPs.
The decision December 29 by the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision that Amazon could not be granted a temporary injunction that would halt ongoing proceedings before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regarding Battle Tested Strategies (BTS), a DSP that had been operating out of Palmdale, California before its contract was yanked by Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) in 2023. That action led to unfair labor practice allegations leveled against Amazon by the union before the NLRB.
The lower court ruling, affirmed in the appeal, was that under the Norris-LaGuardia Act, judges could not issue an injunction in a labor dispute.
Also at issue was the recent lack of a quorum on the NLRB. That quorum only recently has been restored with Senate confirmation of three new members.
An appeal to the Supreme Court is possible. As the NLRB Edge Substack noted, the Fifth Circuit made an opposite ruling over the summer regarding a judge’s ability to issue an injunction in a labor dispute. So there are conflicting circuit court opinions.
Injunction would have halted ongoing process
The two court decisions did not deal directly with the labor issues among Amazon, the union and BTS. But the lack of an injunction does remove a potential barrier to continuation of an NLRB process that so far has mostly been going the Teamsters’ way, including an earlier finding that Amazon is a joint employer along with its DSPs.
The background of the case was recapped by the case’s parties in their various filings.
BTS was a DSP operating out of Amazon’s DAX8 facility in Palmdale, which is north of Los Angeles. In April 2023, there was an ongoing organizing effort to have BTS’ workers align with the Teamsters.
There was never a vote held to affirm that through the ballot box. As the Teamsters described it in a press release about the NLRB action in the case, the BTS employees “became the first group of Amazon delivery drivers in the country to organize a union.” There was no reference by the union to an election.
In April and May, according to the NLRB’s recap of the case, Amazon “increased the number, frequency, and comprehensiveness of vehicle inspections; increased the frequency of vehicle groundings; (and) delayed start times by grounding vehicles.”Amazon has said BTS was found deficient in several of those areas of responsibility.
On April 14, 2023, Amazon informed BTS that its contract as a DSP was being terminated, effective in June. BTS had been a DSP since October 2019.
An ousted employer recognizes the union
Six days later, something occurred that is not believed to have happened at any other DSP that has faced a unionization drive: the owners of BTS recognized the union. According to the NLRB, it also resulted in a collective-bargaining agreement that technically is still in place and will be through the end of April 2026.
BTS management granted the recognition even after being informed that its role as a DSP was coming to an end.
Various arms of the Teamsters commenced actions against Amazon before the NLRB’s Region 31, claiming various unfair labor practices. Both Teamsters Joint Council 42 and Teamsters Local 396 are carrying the unions’ banner in the legal actions.
Region 31 of the NLRB, in a November 2024 opinion at the start of the agency’s process for unfair labor practice cases, consolidated three separate Teamsters complaints into one action. It is within that action that Amazon sought the now-denied injunction.
And while the specifics of the latest decision are important, far more significant is that it keeps alive Region 31’s earlier finding that Amazon had committed unfair labor practices and was a joint employer with the DSP, a decision that if upheld and applied nationally could have far-reaching labor ramifications.
As the federal district court said in its recap of the NLRB process, “On September 30, 2024, the NLRB’s General Counsel issued an administrative complaint along with a notice of hearing against (Amazon) for allegedly failing to recognize and bargain with the Union about ‘essential terms and conditions of employment,’ terminating the contract with BTS ‘without affording the Union an opportunity to bargain over the effects of that termination,’ and discriminating against the Union’s supporters.”
September hearing a positive for the union
At the NLRB, the Region 31 complaint was heard before an administrative law judge (ALJ) in Los Angeles in September. According to Bloomberg reporting from the hearing, despite the shift in administrations from the Biden administration in power when the Region 31 finding was first handed down, on to the Trump administration’s governance at the time of the ALJ hearing, the view being argued by an NLRB attorney had not changed: Amazon was a joint employer with its DSPs.
The NLRB docket for the case indicates there has been no movement by the NLRB since then. The next step if the ALJ lets the case proceed would be a hearing before the full NLRB.
In Amazon’s responses to the NLRB’s findings, while it never acknowledged being a joint employer with the DSP, it did say that “one joint employer is not obligated to recognize and bargain with a union just because another joint employer does so.”
It also said that BTS’ recognition of the union was “unlawful” and had occurred “without (the unions) demonstrating to BTS uncoerced majority support.” Given that, Amazon said, it was “(not) obligated to recognize and bargain with either union or both unions based on BTS’s recognition of, bargaining with, and/or execution of a collective bargaining agreement with either union or both unions.”
A recent push by the Teamsters to gain recognition through the submission of signatures expressing a desire to organize, known in some instances as card check (a term the Teamsters rejects), recently made a submission to Amazon warehouse DCK6 in San Francisco and said the warehouse workers there had “joined” the union.
Their efforts recently got the backing of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who passed a resolution calling on Amazon to negotiate with the union.
Also in late December, the Teamsters said workers at an Amazon facility, DJT6 in Riverside, California had organized under the banner of the union.
The issue of whether workers can join a union through a signature-based process, regardless of what it is called, is a legal issue with a long history of various policies and precedents.
It flared as a new issue in August 2023 when the NLRB established the Cemex precedent that one law firm described as “not exactly card check but awfully close.”
As the law firm of Fisher Phillips said, the Board’s 2023 Cemex decision created a new framework applicable when a union requests to be recognized as the collective bargaining representative of a specified employee group.
“No longer could employers simply refuse to recognize the union while assuring their employees of the opportunity for a secret ballot election,” it said.
But Cemex was handed down under the Biden administration. As attorneys for the firm of Michael Best said in a presentation published online, “even if the Cemex decision is overturned by the NLRB or federal courts, employers may still be subjected to a bargaining order under the Supreme Court decision in Gissel.”
And that reference goes back to a 1969 Supreme Court case, NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co. As the Missouri Law Review said last year in a discussion about the future of Cemex, that precedent was “a new standard for the issuing of remedial bargaining orders in the face of unfair labor practices.”
It is generally seen as a far more demanding standard to meet than what theoretically could occur under Cemex.
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