For Amazon Workers, $30 Is the New $15

The previous lack of a coherent US organizing center may be about to change. Last month, the JFK8 workers voted to bring their independent union into the 1.3 million member International Brotherhood of Teamsters. An emerging caucus of JFK8 rank-and-file workers just swept into union leadership and is pushing for revitalized shop floor organizing and a national Amazon union drive.

Two months before the JFK8 vote, workers at Amazon’s massive KCVG air hub in northern Kentucky, who had been organizing as an independent union, also voted to join the Teamsters (disclosure: I have been assisting the KCVG Amazon workers.). With those two affiliation votes, the campaigns at Amazon’s largest air cargo center and single largest warehouse are now under the same Teamster organizing umbrella. Additionally, workers at numerous delivery stations across the country have been organizing with the Teamsters. Workers at two stations—in Southern California, and outside of Chicago—are now waging union recognition strikes against the company. Independent Amazon worker groups, seeing this movement, are gravitating toward the Teamsters as well. To build industrial union power, that makes eminent sense: The Teamsters union includes hundreds of thousands of workers at UPS, DHL, and other logistics firms. Its new president, Sean O’Brien, has pledged millions for Amazon organizing.

Notably, many of these grassroots campaigns gained steam in the last three years as workers picked up the $30 banner: The demand was a centerpiece of the initial organizing at JFK8; $30 was the driving force launching the KCVG air cargo campaign; it’s a cornerstone CAUSE demand; and it also has played a central role in the delivery driver organizing. Labor leaders and strategists take note: The workers are onto something with this bold $30 demand.

Beyond the United States, Amazon organizing is percolating but not yet exploding. In May, 200 Amazon warehouse workers outside Montreal organized and won official union certification under Quebec’s relatively civilized labor laws. Their union, Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux, is demanding bargaining; not surprisingly, Amazon has refused to come to the table and is filing legal objections—a reprise of its JFK8 strategy.

Workers in Coventry England fell painfully short in their recent union representation election, losing by just 1 percent of 2,600 ballots. Members of the GMB Union, they have struck repeatedly over the last year and a half, forcing wage concessions from Amazon. They were the first Amazonians in England to advance a campaign as far as an election and have vowed to fight on.

In Germany, where the law requires recognition of works councils—essentially labor-management committees—Amazon workers at a number of sites have forced the company to confer and even negotiate over work hours, discipline, and safety issues. The works council model falls short of full collective bargaining, but it’s an important foot in the door for building shop floor power.

Rank-and-file workers globally, organizing through the Amazon Workers International (AWI) network, have been organizing and coordinating strikes and other workplace actions in Germany, Poland, Italy, and elsewhere. AWI is loosely organized but an important grassroots link in the bigger fight.

In India, workers in the Amazon India Workers Association (AIWA) have been fighting back against unimaginable warehouse working conditions—temperatures well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and workers instructed by management to pledge to not take any bathroom or water breaks until they had finished unloading trucks. According to a study just published by UNI Global Union, which is assisting AIWA’s organizing, 80 percent of Indian warehouse workers cite crushing productivity demands, nearly half consider the workplace unsafe, and one in five Indian delivery drivers reports being injured on the job—about the same appalling injury rate reported by their American counterparts.

The Indian Amazon workers also have flexed their strike muscles, with a 24-hour national walkout by delivery drivers in 2021. A weeklong sit-in last year by 700 laid-off warehouse workers secured substantial severance pay.

As with their American compatriots, the Indian workers have their own bold pay demand: a 150 percent increase in minimum warehouse wages, to 25,000 rupees a month.

Back in the United States, workers also are testing power through direct action. After onsite protests by air cargo workers in San Bernardino, Amazon agreed to heat breaks, cooling and water stations, and other safety protections for workers laboring under the brutal Southern California sun. Likewise, KCVG air cargo workers protested the lack of functioning air-conditioning in Amazon’s vans—vehicles they must sit in while waiting on the blacktop tarmac for planes and cargo to arrive. Amazon relented and brought in vans with functioning AC. KCVG workers also staged multiple marches on the boss, forcing Amazon to convert hundreds of workers from seasonal status—without benefits—to permanent status, with vacation and healthcare benefits.

The most recent Amazon Prime Week saw the biggest disruptive job actions yet in the US. Some 130 workers at the San Bernardino air hub staged a one-day unfair labor practice strike, delaying thousands of packages. Workers at the KCVG air hub struck for part of a day over unfair labor practices, forcing Amazon to reroute planes. Both job actions were Teamster-led. Striking Teamster delivery drivers from Chicago extended their picket lines to Atlanta and New York warehouses.

These skirmishes signal the growing boldness and confidence of workers. None of them, of course—not even the strikes to date—come close to tipping the balance of power permanently. Yet they represent important proofs of concept, demonstrations that no matter how omnipotent Amazon may appear to be, it’s the sweat of the workers that generates Amazon’s profits, and the collective withdrawal of labor can disrupt and force even the most powerful company in the world into concessions.

Labor’s challenge is to take those lessons and scale them up by several orders of magnitude. That will require an unprecedented commitment of resources, disciplined and sustained organizing that builds true worker power and resists shortcuts, and big ideas to inspire workers to move past fear and into action. In the United States, the workers’ $30 demand is an important starting point.