USA 
United Kingdom
Amazon is giving another pay raise to its subcontracted delivery drivers in the US amid growing union pressure.
Drivers who work with Amazon’s Delivery Service Partners, or DSPs, will now earn an average of nearly $22 per hour, a seven per cent raise from the previous average of $20.50. The company also gave a pay raise to US drivers last year.
The increase in wages is part of a new $2.1 billion investment the online retailer is making in its delivery program. It doesn’t directly employ drivers but relies on third-party delivery businesses.
The DSP program has created 390,000 driving jobs since 2018 and its total investments of $12 billion since then will help with safety programs and provide incentives for participating businesses.
What is behind Amazon’s pay raises?
US labor regulators are putting more scrutiny on Amazon’s business model, which has classes drivers not as employees but contractors.
Union trouble | Teamsters continue fight for Amazon workers' rights
The Teamsters and other labor groups have argued that Amazon exercises great control over the subcontracted workforce, including by determining their routes, setting delivery targets and monitoring their performances. As a result, they believe the company should be classified as a joint employer under the eyes of the law, which Amazon has contested.
The union has led several strikes at Amazon delivery facilities in the past year, and it has made organizing Amazon employees a key focus.
Labor regulators are also increasingly siding against the company.
Last week, a National Labor Board prosecutor in Atlanta determined Amazon should be held jointly liable for allegedly making threats and other unlawful statements to DSP drivers seeking to unionize in the city. Meanwhile, NLRB prosecutors in Los Angeles determined that Amazon was a joint employer of subcontracted drivers who delivered packages for the company in California.
If a settlement is not reached in those cases, the agency could choose to bring a complaint against Amazon, which would be dealt with through the NLRB’s administrative law system. Amazon has the option to appeal a judge’s order to the agency’s board and eventually, to a federal court.
Amazon's safety record
The firn continually receives criticism for its record on employer safety and other working conditions. Just last week an Amazon delivery driver in Michigan has gone viral on TikTok after continuing to deliver to an address while storm sirens were going off around her.
In actuality, she was wearing headphones that meant she was unaware of the sirens, but the weather conditions were pretty adverse with high winds and rain.
In 2021 the firm was criticized after a delivery driver in Illinois was warned she would be fired if she stopped delivering and returned to the warehouse during a storm siren.
Amazon said the dispatcher “should have immediately directed the driver to seek shelter” when they reported hearing the sirens and said that “under no circumstance should the dispatcher have threatened the driver’s employment.”
Back at the warehouse, however, six workers died when the tornado tore the roof off, raising questions over whether adequate shelter was available, whether workers were advised to go there immediately, and whether the shifts should have gone ahead that evening, given the warnings of severe weather.
