Amazon Teamsters claim victory over retail supergiant's strike retaliation

On March 30, after major pressure from the Teamsters union at both the shop floor and in mediated NLRB sessions, Amazon committed to no longer retaliating against workers who exercise their right to strike. This landmark settlement marks a turning point in the Teamsters' campaign to organize Amazon's 1,300 facilities nationwide.

The Teamsters represent nearly 10,000 Amazon warehouse workers and delivery contractors across the country. The JFK8 location, which was the first Amazon location to win a union in 2022, affiliated with the Teamsters in mid-2024. In December 2024, Amazon Teamsters picketed more than 200 of the facilities in over 20 states. During the 2024 Christmastime strike, workers walked off the job in the midst of the holiday mail season to demand contract negotiations and an end to retaliation. At the time, Amazon claimed that the Teamsters didn't represent workers at the retailer. “There are a lot of nuances here but I want to be clear, the Teamsters don’t represent any Amazon employees despite their claims to the contrary,” said Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for Amazon, in a statement to CNN at the time.

After the strike ended, workers returned to work to find that their time out on strike had been deducted from their UPT banks, a move that union workers saw as direct retaliation for protected concerted activity. UPT exists "as a bank of hours that Amazon workers can use for unscheduled leave and emergencies," the union said in their statement. "The company effectively uses UPT as an attendance policy, and Amazon may terminate workers when they run out of it."

"This issue of UPT is kind of a unique Amazon thing," said Josh Black, labor organizer and Amazon Warehouse worker in San Francisco. "Most of the other companies that we consider to be in the same industry, like UPS, and FedEx and DHL, they don't really have this concept of unpaid time off because they have enough paid time off to use for the sorts of emergencies that come up. Amazon is so greedy that they don't give us really ample paid time off at all."

The threat of losing UPT, and potentially their jobs, made organizing the 2024 strike more complex for shop floor organizers. "People were afraid that they would lose their jobs after going on strike," Black said. "In spite of that, people stood up, walked out and we had a very successful strike with a 48-hour continuous picket here in San Francisco." The NLRB later ruled in early 2025 that Amazon's practice of taking striking workers' UPT was illegal; a ruling that Amazon almost immediately appealed.

In the year that followed, rank-and-file workers organized marches on the boss to demand the UPT be refunded to affected workers while Teamsters lawyers went to bat during a lengthy process of appeals and mediated sessions. Black credits the work of shop floor organizers in mounting a strong pressure campaign against the retail giant. "I also think this is a real win for shop floor organizing," he said. "As much as it's a legal victory and negotiating victory, I think it's also [one for] worker power."

With the new settlement, workers will see their illegally-deducted time restored and feel assured that should they strike in the future, they will not lose their UPT. Amazon is also required to post a notice informing workers of their right to strike in each of their facilities nationwide. "This is the first major legal concession that Amazon has made in our struggle for recognition," Black said. "For [Amazon] to basically admit fault, come to a settlement, and not use their normal tactics shows that they knew they had no chance to win."

The settlement also opens doors for Teamsters organizers to ramp up new organizing efforts in warehouses across the country. "When workers organize together as Teamsters, we have the power to go toe-to-toe with the biggest corporations in the world — and to win," said Randy Korgan, Director of the Teamsters Amazon Division in a statement. "Amazon Teamsters dragged the world's largest retailer to the table kicking and screaming to try to fix the problems the company created for union members."

"This is a huge win for us," Black said. "They knew they were in the wrong and it's really going to embolden us going forward."