How the Teamsters Tested Amazon

But today, the uniforms increasingly seen around Maspeth sport Amazon’s signature ​“smiley swoosh” icon. On the site of a former paper factory stands Amazon’s hulking DBK4 delivery station, where drivers for Amazon’s subcontractors load up packages in Amazon-emblazoned vans for distribution throughout the New York metro area.

On Dec. 19, 2024, the first day of the strike, picketers raise their voices over the din of traffic on Grand Avenue. Driver Gustavo Garcia, who raps as Sha_​Nuki, freestyles on a portable loudspeaker: ​“Amazon, we right here. We ain’t going nowhere.”

Over five days, the strike expanded to 600 Amazon workers at eight facilities from coast to coast. Elsewhere, at dozens of fulfillment centers, Teamsters stewards, retirees and rank-and-file UPS workers distributed pro-union leaflets and chatted up Amazon workers. The strike ended Christmas Eve.

Amazon claimed the strike had no effect, but workers at several facilities told In These Times that the number of packages they moved per day dropped by a third or more. 

The strike was also a test for the Teamsters, who called the walkout in protest of Amazon’s refusal to recognize its unions. The Teamsters represent between 7,000 and 10,000 Amazon workers, according to the union’s estimates, from an air hub in Southern California to a delivery station in San Francisco and a number of delivery contractors. Amazon’s JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island, which kicked off the unionization wave with a breakthrough independent victory in 2022, voted to affiliate with the Teamsters this past summer. 

Independent efforts continue, such as the three-year-long drive at a huge fulfillment center in North Carolina that led to an election filing on Dec. 23, 2024. The warehouse’s 4,300 workers will have a union vote between February 10 and February 15. 

As labor organizers Peter Olney and Rand Wilson argued in Dollars & Sense, the Teamsters can’t go it alone: ​“It will take the combined efforts of unions, worker centers and other initiatives with broad community, political and regulatory support to gain sufficient worker power to impact wages and working conditions,” they wrote. In New York, local Starbucks workers, taxi drivers (with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance), socialists and elected officials, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), joined pickets in Maspeth and on Staten Island. The Democratic Socialists of America is also recruiting socialists to ​“salt” Amazon by taking up jobs with the intent to aid organizing. (Note: I am a member of NYC-DSA.) 

Earlier on December 19, police arrested and released Antonio Rosario, a Teamsters organizer, and Jogernsyn Cardenas, one of the striking workers, then threatened mass arrests before breaking the picket line to allow vans through. Two days later, a spigot on the warehouse let out a deluge of water that swept away union materials and supplies. 

Workers remained undaunted. By Christmas Eve, the running total of participants had swelled to more than a quarter of the 800 contracted drivers at the warehouse and two dozen of the 80 to 120 warehouse workers.

The union campaign in Maspeth began when the warehouse opened three years ago, then got a boost after the Teamsters made historic gains in their 2023 UPS contract. Amazon workers began demanding higher wages to keep up with their UPS counterparts.

“If you’re going to make a profit, we don’t have a problem,” Amazon driver Fleming Knight says on the picket line. ​“We’re Americans. We understand this is a capitalistic system, but at the same time, share the wealth.” Knight is demanding $30 an hour to match those doing similar work at DHL and UPS.

Amazon has shown a willingness to boost wages, at least somewhat, to blunt the appeal of unionizing. A $1.50 raise in fall 2024 brought the average to $22 an hour.

But workers are organizing for more. Amazon’s relentless efforts are notorious for producing injuries and abuse in the name of productivity. An 18-month Senate investigation, led by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and released in December 2024, found that Amazon cherry-picked data to conceal an injury rate twice that of other warehouses. Studies have shown similarly high rates among drivers. 

“We’re loading between 200 or 500 packages per day in 20 minutes,” Amazon driver David Garzon says on the Maspeth picket line. ​“We don’t even have enough time to go to the bathroom.” 

Ira Pollock, a warehouse worker on the picket line who participated in a smaller strike in 2023, sees momentum growing: ​“We deepen our bench and we build our team every year.”