Rank-and-File Teamster Analyzes “Historic” Amazon Christmas Strike

December 19 – 21,2024, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) organized a national strike against Amazon. Picket lines were organized at virtually all Amazon facilities in the United States. Billed as the largest strike yet against the company in this country, it achieved a high degree of coverage in the mainstream media.

In recent years union organizing at Amazon has increased significantly, Beginning with the defeated RWDSU campaign in Bessemer, Alabama in 2021 unions have been organized at multiple facilities, the most successful of which was the JFK8 drive that culminated in the 2022 victory by the independent Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island. Though the union, which has since been affiliated with the IBT, successfully overcame a vicious, anti-union campaign and won an NLRB-sponsored election, the union has not successfully brought the company to the negotiating table. With unions organized in eight facilities in four states, the December strike was an attempt to put pressure on the company to begin negotiations.

While the strike involved less than one percent of Amazon’s US workforce it nonetheless brought significant attention to the working conditions of Amazon warehouse workers and Delivery Service Partners (DSP) in facilities across the country. Local unions affiliated with the IBT set up picket lines comprised of union activists, shop stewards, and union officers with negligible participation from inside Amazon employees, aside from the 8 facilities with formal union memberships. Even the notable JFK8 warehouse had only 201 workers participate in the strike.

The strike nevertheless mobilized a significant segment of IBT members at bargaining units such as UPS, who have a direct interest in organizing Amazon. The greatest success of this nationwide action will most certainly be the cultivation of new contacts in facilities previously unavailable to the union, with interactions between union members and inside Amazon employees the prospects of future organizing drives are greatly improved.