THE Teamsters union launched the biggest strike against delivery giant Amazon in US history today.

Workers walked out at seven facilities in California, Georgia, Illinois and New York City, with the union saying members at hundreds of others are “prepared to join” the strike wave.

“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,” Teamsters president Sean O’Brien said.

The strike concerns Amazon’s refusal to bargain with the union, which represents thousands of its workers. 

The company, one of the world’s biggest with a market value over $2 trillion, argues that its delivery drivers are not its employees but work for a third party (“Delivery Service Partners”) and therefore the union doesn’t represent its workers at all. The union retorts that Amazon is in effect the employer and has complete control of the drivers’ work.

The Teamsters won a recognition ballot at the company’s Staten Island warehouse, but the Seattle-based transnational is determined not to recognise that, joining Elon Musk’s SpaceX in a lawsuit alleging the National Labour Relations Board, which oversees recognition ballots, is itself unconstitutional. With Mr Musk lined up for high office under incoming president Donald Trump, the stakes for industrial relations are high.

But the Teamsters vowed to fight till victory, mobilising members at fulfilment centres across the US to assure workers they have a legal right to withdraw labour whether or not they have a collective agreement.

“What we’re doing is historic,” said Leah Pensler, a warehouse worker at affected site DCK6 in San Francisco. “We are fighting against a vicious union-busting campaign, and we are going to win.”