BREAKING: The Amazon Labor Union Is Going on Strike
“Ultimately, Amazon only speaks one language, and that’s money.”
By Paul Blest and Jordan Zakarin, More Perfect Union
Amazon warehouse workers on Staten Island are officially going on strike after the online retail behemoth stalled on a contract with its first union for more than a year.
The union has called a multi-day strike in the lead-up to Christmas. Since voting to unionize in April 2022, becoming the first and only union of Amazon warehouse workers in the U.S. to date, the union has been working without a contract. Workers say they’ve had enough and need a deal now — and they’re aiming to send a message during the peak of holiday season.
“Ultimately, Amazon only speaks one language, and that’s money,” ALU president Connor Spence told More Perfect Union. “We’re gonna hit them where it hurts until they decide it’s time to come to the table.”
The workers on Staten Island share similar complaints with their fellow Amazon employees around the country: extraordinarily demanding working conditions combined with mediocre pay and benefits. These issues are exacerbated during the holidays, when workers routinely fulfill hundreds of millions of orders.
“They’ve been asking for us to work 11-and-a-half hour days, five days a week,” Robin Kalellis, who has worked for Amazon for four years, told More Perfect Union.
In 2022, Amazon workers accounted for 36 percent of all warehouse employees in the U.S. but 53 percent of the injuries (more than 38,000), according to the Warehouse Worker Resource Center. Spence, who was fired last year in what the union alleges was illegal retaliation for his organizing activity, said that during the holiday season, the company is routinely “cutting a lot of corners, bending the rules, pushing conditions that are unsafe.”
“Everything you read, every horror story you read about Amazon is true but worse,” Justine Medina, an organizer who has worked at Amazon for three years, told More Perfect Union. “And that is why I voted yes to the strike.”
The workers say the company has refused to engage them in negotiations to reach a contract. Instead, Amazon is one of several companies suing in hopes the courts will rule that the National Labor Relations Board — the New Deal-era independent federal agency that oversees labor union elections at private-sector employers — is unconstitutional and has no authority.
In the meantime, the union has continued organizing at the notoriously high-turnover company. The ALU, initially organized as an independent union, affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters earlier this year. Organizers say that hundreds of workers at JFK8 — the striking warehouse — have already committed to the work stoppage.
“Amazon is one of the wealthiest companies in the world,” Sultana Hossain, a member of ALU leadership who worked at the facility for four years, told More Perfect Union. “They can keep us in court for the rest of time. The only thing that will get them to negotiate a union contract with us is impacting their bottom line.”