Amazon’s legal fights with NLRB could affect future of joint employer doctrine

Online retailer Amazon receives over 11.95 million orders each day and contracts with delivery service partners (DSPs) to complete its abundant deliveries. Amazon employees, technology, and operations work to fulfill online orders, and the orders are packaged at fulfillment centers and dispatched to delivery stations. At the delivery stations, the DSPs take over. They direct teams of delivery associates to load the packages into their vehicles and deliver them to Amazon customers.

Amazon currently has over 3,500 DSPs worldwide and prides itself on maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with each. Recently, however, decisions from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) concerning the relationship between Amazon, its DSPs, and the DSPs’ delivery drivers threaten not only the future of Amazon’s delivery model but also the future of the joint employer doctrine.

Delivery drivers unionize

In Palmdale, California, approximately 84 delivery drivers working for Amazon DSP Battle-Tested Strategies voted to unionize with Teamsters Local Union No. 396, an affiliate of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The organized members of Teamsters 396 negotiated a contract with Battle-Tested Strategies that, among other things, demanded an immediate wage increase and contained provisions governing future wage increases and vehicle conditions.