Amazon Teamsters are Ready to Strike Before the Holidays

Seven Amazon facilities have voted to go on strike before the busiest shopping season of the year. Amazon workers, organized with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, have voted to authorize strikes at seven facilities—two in New York City, one in Skokie, Illinois, and four facilities in southern California. These workers could go on strike at the height of the holiday shopping season. 

“The corporate elitists who run Amazon are leaving workers with no choice,” said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien. “Greedy executives are pushing thousands of hardworking Americans to the brink. Amazon rakes in more money than anybody, they subject workers to injury and abuse at every turn, and they illegally claim not to be the rightful employer of nearly half their workforce. This rigged system cannot continue. Amazon must be held accountable to workers and consumers alike. If workers are forced onto the picket line, Amazon will be striking itself.”

These Amazon workers are fighting for recognition of their union and to bargain a labor agreement with the multi-billion-dollar company. Workers seek to remedy low wages and dangerous working conditions. 

“We’re tired of Amazon’s lies,” said Alexis Ayala, who is a a driver at the DAX5 facility located in the City of Industry, California. “Amazon is responsible for our low pay and unsafe working conditions. My co-workers and I are ready to stand with our brothers and sisters around the country and fight back against this abusive company.”

In June of this year, the 5,500 workers at the JFK8 Amazon facility in Staten Island, which in 2022 became the first unionized Amazon warehouse, joined forces with the powerful Teamsters union to form the Amazon Labor Union (ALU)-IBT Local 1. Since then, the company has refused to negotiate with the workers on a contract. 

“Amazon’s refusal to negotiate is a direct attack on our rights,” said Connor Spence, ALU-IBT Local 1 president. “If Amazon chooses to ignore us, they’re the ones ruining Christmas for millions of families. We’re not just fighting for a contract; we’re fighting for the future of worker power at Amazon and beyond.”

Amazon is employing a similar tactic in organized warehouses across the country, to the point where the Teamsters gave the mega-corporation a deadline of December 15 to come to the bargaining table with workers, “on behalf of thousands of Amazon delivery drivers and warehouse workers who have already organized for Teamsters representation nationwide.”

“This growing movement of Amazon workers can count on the muscle and support of more than 1.3 million hardworking Teamsters across North America,” said Randy Korgan, Teamsters Amazon Division Director and Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 1932. “If Amazon fails to agree to bargaining dates with the Teamsters by Dec. 15, we are ready to take the fight directly to the company’s doorstep in every state. Amazon workers are going to win, and the company knows it.”

In anticipation of the December 15 deadline, workers at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, the DBK4 warehouse in Queens, the DIL7 Amazon delivery station in Skokie, Illinois, and the four southern California facilities, DFX4, DAX5, KSBD, and DAX8, have voted to authorize a potential strike. 

“Amazon is one of the biggest companies on Earth, but we are struggling to pay our bills,” said Riley Holzworth, a worker at DIL7. “Other workers are seeing our example and joining our movement, because we are only going to get the treatment we deserve if we fight for it.”

Additionally, over 1,000 Amazon workers at the company’s KSBD air hub in Southern California have voted to form a union with the Teamsters, joining the thousands of Amazon workers across the country who are demanding union recognition.

Amazon Teamsters have also joined fellow Amazon workers around the world in the international “Make Amazon Pay” campaign, targeting the corporation for its exploitation of workers, communities, and the planet.