From December 19 to the 24th an estimated 680 workers across eight warehouses in the United States struck against Amazon. The strike was the largest collective action of Amazon workers to date. There was also strikes in solidarity called by the Ver.di German United Services Union in Werne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The strikers’ aimed for increased wages, better workplace safety conditions, more benefits such as better pension plan. This paired with efforts to unionize delivery drivers and warehouse workers in coordination with workers of other unions to allow for better collective bargaining to achieve these goals who held pickets outside non-unionized Amazon facilities across the country.

Although impressive in the number of workers who picketed against amazon in a short period of time, it wasn’t a very effective strike – even if costing potential millions over the holiday season – as it remained as a performative show of force by the Teamsters leadership in the face of the trillion dollar company, generating $15 billion of income within the last quarter. By having a 5 day strike much similar to the starbucks strike, to which capitalists can wait out knowing that such losses can be negated within the coming weeks, it shows that a much more serious, concerted and unified effort of Amazon workers to organize themselves outside the control of the established collaborationist unions must take place before any serious and effective strike action can occur.

Struggles Of Class

America’s largest cross-industry regime union, the IBT claimed to represent 10,000 workers of Amazon after they partnered with the ALU in June 2024. The union struggle with Amazon has been going on for years but with only recent gains. The story of the ALU’s journey is detailed in the TCP N. 42, from the walkouts in response to the lack of COVID-19 protections back in 2020, ironically reprimanding and firing organizers under the false pretense for violating quarantine protocols and to the with the first factory warehouse in Staten Island, New York decided to unionize in 2021.

The Teamsters billionaire bootlicking president Sean O’Brien said that it is the fault of Amazon for the package delays, for missing the negotiating deadline out of a sense of greed. Personalizing the ignoring of negotiations as an extension of the “disease” of greedy intent from administrators, rather than an extension of inherent economic impulses naturally stemming from the crises of capital. As the largest seller of goods in American largest online marketplace globally, Amazon therefore is the largest expression of recurring economic crises through overproduction exceeding consumption, causing deflation of products, subsequent falling of profit, increasing of debt and loans taken on by the bourgeoisie, to which the proletariat pay with lower wages, higher exploitation and increased immiseration through higher costs of living from an inevitable period of inflation.

Hostile from Above

The company’s response to the strike is to claim that there is an illegal attempt to coerce workers by the Teamsters to join their union and their effort. A spokesperson from Amazon said “there’s a lot of nuances here but I want to be clear, The Teamsters don’t represent any Amazon employees despite their claims to be on the contrary.” continuing saying what you see here is almost entirely outsiders – not Amazon employees or partners – and the suggestion otherwise is another lie from the Teamsters.”

The company has spent tens of millions of dollars in union-busting efforts such as threatening wages, benefits, captive audience presentations, removing unionization efforts from messaging boards and firing workers for unionizing. Workers picketing were even arrested at Amazon’s BD4 Distribution Center in Queens, New York by the NYPD for “obstructing vehicle traffic.” proving time and time again that the police are the paid for attack-dogs of the bourgeois hired to protect and defend private property and nothing else. However, such repressive efforts by the company would prove meaningless, if labor mobilization was a fruitless endeavor for the working class.

Amazon is known to survey workers with their Time Off Task metric, taking socially necessary labour time literally, managers spying on their employees with around the clock radio communication, tallying when they were doing unnecessary functions such as using the bathroom or cleaning workspaces, reprimanding or even terminating workers for not meeting productivity quotas. Workers report being pressured to work more and faster causing sustaining pain and injuries, having to urinate in bottles to keep up with demands, workers suffering from heat stroke – even during the winter months – caused by facilities and company vans being unequipped with proper air conditionings and ventilation units. Amazon plans to invest $2 million for safety programs and touts its pay for its warehouse and transportation workers at a base wage of $22 an hour. While UPS is worth 20 times less than Amazon unionized workers here make from $25-$49 dollars an hour.

Reconcile Between None

The boss-linked Teamsters leadership have a history of electoralism spending upwards of 4.5 million in 2024 on lobbying, to both parties, mainly the Democratic Party. The Teamsters president Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention. Such coalitions with the bourgeois state parties attempt to pacify class struggle into reconciliation and collaborationism, in order to divert the union struggle back into the bourgeois state, in the benefit of the ruling class. Perverting class struggle through the lens of “peoples’ struggle” through national populist rhetoric against so-called elites of society instead of against the ruling capitalist class. Diverting the American working class’s attention through economic nationalism towards immigrants and workers in China and India that have “taken” industrial, medicinal and technical jobs that once "belonged” to America, Supporting dirigiste policies such as tariffs to attempt to bring jobs back to America.

Although the IBT had not formally supported either party or candidate their goals are to support a bipartisan coalition to push “pro-labor” policies for the American people, recognizing the truth that no one bourgeois party represents the will of the working class but contradictorily wants to collaborate with the bourgeois state as a whole, seeing their collaborations with the NLRB and DOL as not integrated enough in the state apparatus. This push for bipartisan electoralism was out of concern for an individualist workerist notion that places the ephemeral opinions and positions of the rank-and-file worker as a priority of class mobilization.

Undivided from Below

Even in recognizing such faults of the teamsters leadership tactics and rhetoric, this shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement of independent isolated unions, reliant on NLRB petition or voluntary employers for certification for unionization, both hedging for bourgeois support no differently than a regime union. Workers should be striving for a class union devoid of any bourgeois influence such as directly through employers or through the middleman of the bourgeois state, striking directly against the bourgeoisie as a whole in coordination with rank-and-file workers internationally.

The collaboration with the IBT and RWDSU was suggested by the party back in 2022 but the cross sector solidarity was weak even with the affiliation of the IBT, due to it not being logistically planned out in coordination with other workers within the warehouse, postal delivery, railway and cargo shipping sectors – many of which industries have IBT members – on a national scale to apply the most amount pressure against Amazon and capital as a whole and opening opportunities for expanding class struggle. Comrades within the party have intervened in strikes both in Oregon and Virginia in solidarity with picketing workers and have been active in leadership roles in the struggle of unionizing amazon workers in the recently closed locations in Quebec, talking about the importance of class unionism and rank-and- file caucuses to combat regime unionism, as well as distributing propaganda and speaking on the party’s programme.

The rebuilding of a united class based front in the interests of all workers internationally, in coordination with the grassroot unions and rank-and-file workers of every sect, trade, race, creed and nation to regain a militant labor force to combat regime unionist collaboration wherever it might be expressed is the only effective defense against the bosses attacks. Class struggle must be in the interests of the working class as a whole, in rejection of collaboration with the ruling class of one’s company, one’s own industry, one’s own nation and against one’s bourgeois state parties.

STRUGGLES OF CLASS!

HOSTILE FROM ABOVE!

RECONCILE BETWEEN NONE!

UNDIVIDED FROM BELOW!

WORKERS’ OF THE WORLD, UNITE!!!