Amazon workers, organized with the Teamsters Union, are ramping up their strike efforts ahead of the holiday season.
They’re demanding higher wages, better working conditions, and a start to contract negotiations after years of stalling by the company.
As the holiday shopping season ramps up, Amazon workers across the country are escalating their efforts to secure union contracts. The Teamsters Union had given Amazon until December 15 to agree to dates for formal contract negotiations, warning that failure to come to the table would result in labor action, including a potential Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike. Workers, who have been battling Amazon’s aggressive union-busting tactics for years, are showing increased determination for their demands to be met.
Warehouse workers and delivery drivers are coming together to demand better pay, safer working conditions, job security, and union recognition. In a video of Amazon workers announcing the December 15 deadline to a warehouse manager, workers listed other ongoing issues they want to see addressed, like the need for safer trucks, winter coats, and paid vacation and holidays. “We will not stop until our needs are met!” they chanted.
Despite widespread support for unions in the United States and growing solidarity among workers, Amazon has refused to engage in contract negotiations and continues to attempt to derail the bargaining process. The company’s refusal to negotiate with unionized workers is a continuation of its well-known anti-union efforts, including the use of surveillance, intimidation, and legal (and illegal) maneuvers to prevent workers from organizing. However, “our members are ready to do whatever it takes to get a contract,” said Connor Spence, President of ALU-IBT Local 1.
Workers at two major Amazon warehouses in New York City — JFK8 in Staten Island and DBK4 in Queens — recently voted to authorize a strike. The strike vote demonstrates continued frustration among Amazon workers, especially at the JFK8 facility, where Amazon’s first-ever union victory occurred over two years ago.
Workers at JFK8 have remained at the forefront of Amazon’s labor struggle, and faced continued resistance from Amazon management, which has been accused of using illegal tactics to prevent meaningful negotiations. Workers at JFK8 and other Amazon locations say they have faced intimidation, surveillance, and delays in contract discussions, undermining their efforts to secure a deal.
As the holiday season approaches, the stakes are high for the e-commerce giant, especially given that JFK8 and DBK4 are among Amazon’s busiest and most important warehouses in New York City. A strike at these facilities could significantly disrupt Amazon’s operations during one of its busiest shipping periods of the year.
The timing of this strike threat emphasizes the determination of workers to win a contract. A strike during the holiday season would not only disrupt Amazon’s supply chain but could also send a powerful message to the company about the leverage and economic power workers hold. Teamsters have also been organizing rallies, protests, and walkouts over the last year among drivers and at key facilities across the country including New York, Georgia, Illinois, and California, highlighting Amazon’s refusal to negotiate while workers’ livelihoods and safety are at risk.
The power to win this fight will come from the unity among drivers and warehouse workers; they are strongest if they take the fight into their own hands and decide democratically each step in this fight. Support from other unions, workers, students, and community members will be key to strengthening a potential strike that will be attacked by the bosses, the police, and the two main political parties.
Why This Fight Matters For All Of Us
Amazon workers are threatening to strike over the company’s blatant refusal to negotiate as well as its intensely exploitive and abusive treatment of workers — but these bread-and-butter demands are intertwined with a much larger struggle against corporate greed and the capitalist system itself.
Amazon’s business depends on logistics, a sector with immense strategic potential for disrupting capitalist production by bringing supply chains to a halt. As we know from the pandemic, capitalist supply chains break down severely as soon as workers aren’t there to run them. For this reason, a strike at Amazon would not only be about wages; it would challenge the labor practices that make Amazon possible, and the broader capitalist structure.
Like UPS workers, who move about 6 percent of the United States’ GDP every day, and port workers, who have the ability to put global capitalism in a chokehold by going on strike, Amazon workers are positioned at an artery of global capitalism. Jeff Bezos and the company’s stakeholders stand to lose a lot if Amazon workers organize against them, and the working class as a whole only stands to gain.
Amazon made $15.3 billion in profits in the third quarter of 2024 alone. While Amazon workers barely make ends meet — many juggling multiple jobs and living in precarious conditions — Bezos has spent millions on union-busting efforts and a trip to space, and now plans to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
Bezos has amassed this incomprehensive level of wealth off the back of Amazon workers, and it empowers him to continue exploiting people and prevent them from fighting back. It allows him to collect and hoard consumer data and sell it to advertisers. It allows him to collaborate with the forces behind U.S. imperialism, like the genocidal state of Israel. It motivates him to work with the police and ICE, who can be relied upon to protect his private wealth and terrorize Amazon workers and migrants alike.
Because of this, the struggle being waged by Amazon workers is incredibly important, not only for the workers but for everyone in the United States and the world who faces exploitation and oppression. If Amazon workers strike and win their demands, their power will be broadcast widely to the public, galvanizing workers and the labor movement.
What Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump, and the entire American imperialist regime don’t want us to know is that as powerful as Bezos may seem, he is not more powerful than the over a million workers around the world who run Amazon. In fact, he is worthless without them, and they have the power to topple him.
Workers and supporters of the labor movement around New York City are mobilizing in support of the potential Amazon strike. We recognize that the deeply unfair situations Amazon workers face on the job, as well as outside — such as extreme wealth inequality, long commutes in an overpriced yet underfunded transit system, not to mention predatory landlords and the violent, racist police force that protects them — are shared by the millions of workers of New York City and beyond. In that sense, an attack on one worker is an attack on all of us — and, when workers fight and win their demands, they advance the struggle for all of us.
So, if you’re someone who’s ever had a boss who disrespected and exploited you – even if it was in a different setting, like a coffee shop or restaurant, an office, or a film shoot – this struggle matters to you. We must show our unwavering solidarity with Amazon workers.