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Members of the Teamsters union struck at Amazon early Thursday as part of a labor dispute that would spread to six facilities in four states from coast to coast.

Amazon said its operations would not be affected by any of the union’s actions. Although the Teamsters claim to represent 7,000 Amazon workers nationwide, that represents less than 1% of the company’s U.S. workforce.

“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We have given Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do the right thing for our members. They ignored it,” Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien said in a statement posted on X.

The first location hit at 6 a.m. ET Thursday was a facility in Queens. Then, an hour later, they were joined by workers in Skokie, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

“We fight and fight for basic services and needs that are otherwise industry standard,” driver Luke Cianciotto told reporters outside the Skokie plant shortly before the strike began. “Many of us don’t have Christmas presents under the tree this year, the wages and hours we get at Amazon are simply not enough to make ends meet in today’s economy.”

The union pointed to Amazon’s profits, which have risen sharply, especially in recent years. Amazon reported net income of $39.2 billion in the first nine months of this year, more than double the same period in 2023, with revenue of $450.2 billion so far this year and is making it the second largest private company in the world after Walmart.

“It’s no longer about putting packages before people, but about putting profits before people. It’s people over packages, people over profits,” said Ash’shura Brooks, another Skokie driver who spoke outside the facility.

At the striking locations scheduled to strike on Thursday, the union claims to represent drivers who work for an Amazon contractor. The union claims that under a rule announced by the NLRB, they can be considered joint employers – both the delivery service and Amazon. But Amazon and other business groups are challenging that rule.

“There are many nuances here, but I want to be clear that despite claims to the contrary, the Teamsters do not represent Amazon employees,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a statement. “This entire narrative is a PR play and the Teamsters’ conduct last year and this week is illegal.”

Brooks and Cianciotto scoffed at the idea that they were not Amazon employees, even though their direct employer was a third-party contractor. Brooks called the company’s claim “heartbreaking…that Amazon tells us we are not Amazon drivers even though we wear Amazon vests and deliver in Amazon vans.”

Cianciotto said using third-party sellers is simply a way for Amazon to avoid responsibility for negotiating with drivers.

“Without Amazon, these third-party sellers don’t exist,” he said.

But the joint employer rule that the union relies on to secure better rates for drivers is in danger of being repealed once President-elect Trump appoints a more business-friendly general counsel and NLRB board members early next year.

But it’s not just drivers who work for independent contractors that Amazon doesn’t want to recognize as Teamsters members. Amazon shows no signs of being willing to reach an agreement with the Teamsters or even acknowledge that the union is speaking on behalf of any of its workers, even though the union has said that employees at numerous Amazon facilities have signed membership cards.

Unions typically gain employee representation by requesting that elections be held under the supervision of the NLRB. Although voluntary recognition of a union by an employer is permissible under labor law, it occurs relatively rarely and in this case seems practically impossible given Amazon’s stated positions. But instead of seeking votes to achieve NLRB-approved representation, the union is demanding that Amazon recognize workers who have signed cards asking to join the union.

The Amazon Labor Union, an emerging union, won such a vote at Amazon’s Staten Island facility in April 2022. And that vote was upheld by the NLRB. But despite repeated setbacks in court, Amazon continues to fight the election results in additional lawsuits.

Other union representation votes failed before and since at other Amazon facilities. ALU members voted in June to join the Teamsters, one of the largest and most powerful unions in the country with 1.3 million members.

The union did not announce a strike at the Staten Island warehouse, although the union had previously announced that a strike there had been authorized by rank-and-file members. The union did not immediately say why those members were unwilling to join the strike.

Other locations scheduled to be targeted later Thursday morning include Atlanta, San Francisco, Victorville and the City of Industry in California.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.