Striking Amazon Workers Aim to Crack an Anti-Union Behemoth

The Amazon workers who walked off the job at warehouses across the country at peak season are trying to establish a union beachhead against one of the most important — and most anti-union — employers in the world.

Amazon workers and union members picket outside the DBK4 Amazon distribution center in Queens, New York, on Friday, December 20, 2024. (Victor J. Blue / Bloomberg via Getty Images)


Amazon workers picketed their employer over the weekend through blisteringly frigid weather and, in New York, a flooded sidewalk as part of an escalating series of strikes by a minority of workers across the logistics behemoth’s supply chain. These strikes, waged from coast to coast at nine warehouses, are part of a nationwide movement to consolidate organizing at the logistics giant in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT).

In 2022, the Teamsters launched a division to support organizing at Amazon. The union now represents 5,500 workers at the hulking JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island that formed the independent Amazon Labor Union (ALU) over two years ago. The ALU voted in June to affiliate with the Teamsters, creating ALU-IBT Local 1. Amazon has refused to recognize the union and bargain a contract.

As the strikes wrap up as peak season ends on Christmas Eve, it’s difficult to know how disruptive the limited-duration walkouts were to Amazon’s operations. Amazon has claimed the strikes have had no effect. Several workers at different facilities, however, have said that the number of packages they moved per day dropped by a third or more.

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