Six other facilities in California, Illinois and Georgia, as well as JFK, are also on strike8 The fulfillment center in Staten Island, NY will soon follow suit.

The Teamsters are striking at Amazon because the company refuses to recognize unions at its delivery stations and fulfillment center and to negotiate with its workers. The union has argued that under the new joint employer standard, delivery drivers are also legally employees of Amazon, which Amazon denies.

In response, the Teamsters called on Amazon bosses to announce trial dates by December 15 or there is a threat of nationwide strikes before the Christmas shopping boom.

The strike started at 6 I’m at the DBK delivery station4 in Maspeth, New York, where workers transport orders to the doorsteps of customers in the New York metropolitan area. Hours after the strike began, New York police responded to the planned disruption of company operations with two arrests.

The first involved Amazon driver Jogernsyn Cardenas, who said he joined the union movement at the urging of his nephew but did not realize the strike had begun when he showed up for work today.

He stopped his van when striking colleagues called on him to join them. ​“We surrounded the van and told him to get out. Come to us!” says Latrice Johnson, a driver for one of the eight Amazon subcontractors at DBK4 (who I interviewed in September about the union campaign). ​“He listened and wanted to know more. And the police stopped that and kept telling him to keep going. He said: ​‘How am I supposed to go anywhere? The people are here. I can’t hit people.’”

NYPD officers surrounded Cardenas, blocking him in the cab of his van and ultimately arresting him after he attempted to exit his vehicle after screaming ​“Let him go!” from colleagues and allies.

““Seeing this man unlawfully removed from the van while he was behind the wheel,” Johnson recalled of her brothers’ encounters with police. ​“And I stood up for him, like I would for any of these people out here, like any of us in the family.”

Johnson joined others calling for Cardenas’ release and followed police as they marched Cardenas down the street to a patrol car. An officer grabbed her waist, threw her back and then pushed her.

The second arrest was Anthony Rosario, the Teamsters organizer and former UPS driver who played a leading role in the organization 1997 UPS strike.

Rosario says he and the workers complied with police requests to let a truck through every two to three minutes. When police began allowing more trucks through, he says he ​“I went ahead and used my rights… and you know, they just decided to arrest me. So at the end of the day, not only are they violating our First Amendment rights, but they are violating all of the workers’ rights on this picket line.”

Workers stood firm on picket lines, disrupting deliveries. Police, zip ties in hand, threatened mass arrests but failed to do so as workers banded together to defend each other.

Eventually, police barricaded the pickets and cleared the way for trucks to leave the delivery station unhindered.

Amazon directed requests for comment to the NYPD and said it was the police ​“decided to arrest the individuals.” The NYPD did not respond at the time of publication. In an earlier statement, Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said In these times The strike is illegal and the Teamsters do not represent thousands of Amazon workers.

Rosario and Cardenas were released with the assistance of the Teamsters legal department.

“We are all united in this. This is the only way we can get what we want,” Cardenas said afterwards, alternating between speaking Spanish and English. ​“We have to keep fighting. If we don’t fight, we won’t get more money and more benefits. Because believe it or not, we deliver more packages than UPS and FedEx.”

Teamsters on site 804 President Vincent Perrone sees the battle at Amazon as a pivotal moment to maintain industry standards across the logistics industry. ​“If you look at these Amazon drivers and warehouse workers, they have to pay for their own medical care,” Perrone said. ​“They have no pensions. They earn half the hourly wage of UPS employees. UPS and FedEx used to dominate the industry. Now this shitty company comes along that’s worth a trillion dollars and they’re sending people into space. But they want to pay people like shit. We have to change that, and we will change that now.”

When asked how he felt after his release, Cardenas said: ​“I feel like a hero for having the courage to stop my van.”