| Hi. It's Spencer in Seattle. A tentative agreement between the Teamsters union and UPS could mean trouble for Amazon. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Uber's stock fell on fears of slower growth
• There's a $1 billion plan for a battery plant in India
• AMD shares gained after earnings About 340,000 United Parcel Service Inc. employees are voting this month on a proposed contract that would increase hourly wages by $7.50 over the next five years. Amazon.com Inc. should be interested in the negotiations, led by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Amazon, which is UPS's largest customer, has spent the past several years building out its own delivery network to reduce its reliance on UPS and the company's union workers. Amazon drivers now handle more than half of the company's packages in the US. But Amazon delivery drivers earn about $19 an hour, much less than senior UPS drivers who will get an average top rate of $49 an hour under the proposed contract, according to the union. Paying drivers less than the union-negotiated contracts at UPS appears to be key to making Amazon's strategy work. It's also a severe threat to the union because it undermines the value of the rest of the labor pool. Teamsters President Sean O'Brien has vowed to turn his union's attention toward Amazon, the nation's second-largest private employer behind Walmart Inc., once the UPS contract is resolved. With that deal, he intends to demonstrate to Amazon workers what a union can accomplish. The Teamsters have already been ratcheting up pressure in recent weeks with picketing outside Amazon facilities in California, Michigan, New Jersey and other states, saying the company offers workers low pay and dangerous working conditions. Amazon has said the picketing has not caused any disruptions. Amazon has been thinking a lot about unions in recent years. It suffered a stunning upset last year when employees at a Staten Island warehouse voted to join an upstart union. But Amazon has effectively stalled the labor movement from spreading to other facilities in any meaningful way. Organizing drivers could be even tougher. Unlike warehouse workers, most drivers aren't employees at Amazon. They're dispersed among hundreds of small businesses that lease vans and employ the drivers. But Amazon can't rely on the playbook it has used to fend off unions from its warehouses. The company typically brings employees into mandatory "training" sessions where they're told unions can't guarantee anything and that workers are better off with a direct line of communication to the company without interference. That's a difficult argument to make with drivers who aren't employees. It gets even trickier for Amazon if the Teamsters are successful in securing double the wages for some drivers at UPS who are doing practically the same work. —Spencer Soper Elon Musk's X Corp. sued a nonprofit group that monitors online hate speech, accusing it of falsely describing the social media platform formerly known as Twitter as being "overwhelmed with harmful content." Uber is developing a chatbot to add to its app, joining the long list of companies that hope AI can improve customer service, marketing and other automated tasks. Meta started its process of ending news availability in Canada over a law requiring digital platforms to pay local news outlets. Amazon is expanding its digital health care effort called Amazon Clinic to all 50 states and Washington, DC. Overstock.com is now operating as Bed Bath & Beyond in the US following a successful rebrand in Canada, the CEO told Bloomberg TV. | 
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