More than 100 workers at Amazon’s Toland Street warehouse in SF’s Bayview District have voted to unionize, though the hard part will be getting Amazon to recognize or negotiate with the union.

If you’ve ever been down to the Amazon warehouse at 749 Toland Street, it is one of the most Charles Dickens “Best of times, worst of times” scenes of income inequality you will see anywhere in San Francisco. In front of the warehouse, you will behold a string of RVs housing unsheltered people, or makeshift tents and tarps turned into encampments. But right behind that image, you will see the blue smiley-face logo and moniker of Amazon, whose tech stock is currently at $175 a share, and whose market capitalization is nearly $2 trillion.

The workers at that warehouse are determined to see less income inequality around those parts. The Chronicle reports that the 100+ Amazon workers at that Toland Street warehouse, known as “DCK6 Amazon,” have voted to unionize and have joined the 1.3 million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters union.

“Amazon workers at DCK6 handle thousands of packages every day. We are essential to making sure that parents receive their baby formula on time and families get their gifts by the holidays,” DCK6 warehouse worker Jocelyn Vargas said in a Teamsters press release. “We need good pay and benefits to take care of our families too. That’s why we formed a union with the Teamsters. We are essential workers, and it’s time Amazon treats us that way.”

As KQED explains, Amazon has faced many unionization efforts thanks to their minimum wage pay rates and highest employee injury rates in their industry. The company routinely keeps warehouse workers just barely below full-time employment, so as to classify workers as part-timers with little or no benefits. A 2022 effort to unionize Staten Island Amazon employees in New York was successful, but Amazon has kept the matter tied up in court ever since.  

And Amazon would have to recognize the union, which they have been loath to do anywhere else in the US. KQED points out that this unionization effort is “unlikely to yield a contract deal without additional government or community pressure.”

Will there be government or community pressure? It’s San Francisco, so of course there will be. Amazon’s proposed $200 million fulfillment center at Seventh and Berry Street was sidelined by SF supervisors with an 18-month moratorium in 2022 for its lack of union jobs. Amazon has only recently restarted their plans for that facility.  

And considering the investment they’ve put into that Mission Creek facility on Seventh Street, you would expect that Amazon will be highly unfriendly toward the Toland Street warehouse union plans, lest the workers at the upcoming Seventh Street warehouse get any funny ideas about living wages and employment benefits.

Related: Amazon Submits Their Plans for That Mission Bay Delivery Warehouse They Had to Put On Ice [SFist]

Images via Google Street View