Police Break Picket Line, Allow Christmas Deliveries to Stream Out

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Bear Wallace
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New York City police officers broke up a picket line of Amazon employees trying to block delivery trucks from leaving a company facility on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, nearly 10,000 Amazon workers in multiple states went on strike, less than a week before Christmas.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced in a news release it launched its strike at seven Amazon facilities located in New York, Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco and Skokie, Illinois.

“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 General President Sean M. O’Brien.

At an Amazon facility in Queens, the NYPD broke the picket line, allowing delivery trucks to leave, no doubt delivering many Christmas gifts.

“NYPD literally locking arms to protect Amazon’s operations lol,” Alex Press, a labor reporter for Jacobin, wrote.

She also shared a video of an Amazon truck driver being arrested after he stopped his vehicle in the middle of the facility entrance drive and tried to join the strike.

A policeman then got in the truck and drove it away, Press reported.

Democrat New York state Sen. Michael Gianaris posted on social media platform X in response, “NYPD out here in Queens doing Amazon’s bidding by roughing up and arresting workers who are standing up for themselves. The [Teamsters] have a right to strike and our police should be protecting them, not Jeff Bezos.”

Wired reported, “At around 9: 50 am, NYPD announced via loudspeaker that any workers who stood in the road would be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Shortly after, the NYPD placed a Teamsters organizer under arrest, though it’s unclear if they were in the street. Eventually, police set up barricades outside the garage and began personally organizing the delivery vans with non-striking Amazon loss-prevention workers.”

Amazon employees are among the highest-paid retail workers in the country.

In September, the company announced it was increasing its total compensation package for fulfillment and transportation workers to more than $29 per hour, an increase of over $3,000 a year for the average full-time employee. That figure included an average base salary of $22 per hour, plus the cost of health care and other benefits, the company said in a news release.

CBS News reported that Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel responded to the strike in a statement saying, “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.”

She added, “The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to 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.”

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post Police Break Picket Line, Allow Christmas Deliveries to Stream Out appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

This article may have been paraphrased or summarized for brevity. The original article may be accessed here: Read Source Article.

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