Teamsters Confront Amazon: An Early Assessment

• Published in: New labor forum 2022-09, Vol.31 (3), p.43-51
• Main Authors: Reese, Ellen, Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Capitalism; Consumers; Electronic commerce; Expenditures; Global economy; Logistics; Organizational power; Pandemics; Sales; Shipping industry; Storage; Trade; Warehouses; Work; Workers
• ISSN: 1095-7960; 1557-2978
• DOI: 10.1177/10957960221116835

We live in the age of “Amazon capitalism,” a concentration of corporate power and influence over the global economy on a scale not seen before, marked by several new ways of operating, and major problems related to workers, consumers, economies, and communities.1 Amazon’s rapidly growing influence over the world’s economy was accelerated during the pandemic. Along with the corporation’s massive profit generator, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides cloud computing, data storage, and related electronic services and applications, its e-commerce operations and Amazon Prime program continue to grow in popularity, with its offer of expedited “free shipping” of a wide variety of goods to one’s doorstep with the mere click of a finger. Amazon’s growth in sales also peaked during the pandemic, surpassing the total sales of Walmart, with consumers spending $610 billion between June 2020 and June 2021. Amazon is now the world’s fifth largest company, with its largest consumer market in the United States. Yet, while shipping is free and convenient for Amazon Prime members, Amazon’s e-commerce retail and logistics business has taken a toll on its rapidly growing blue-collar workforce of warehouse and delivery workers, who are underpaid, work long hours, are electronically surveilled, subject to speed-up,3 and experience higher rates of serious injury and turnover than the U.S. warehouse industry average.4 No wonder Amazon workers are increasingly organizing both internationally and in the United States, and gaining the interest of unions. In providing an overview and assessment of the Teamsters’ new organizing campaign targeting Amazon in the United States, we focus on its efforts to mobilize workers and community members. We recognize that these efforts have only just begun and are part of the Teamsters’ broader multifaceted strategy, which also includes legal and national policy strategies, shifting the narrative about Amazon in the media, and efforts to organize Amazon workers in other countries, such as Canada. Nevertheless, the Teamsters’ efforts to engage their own rank-and-file members, non-union workers in warehousing and delivery, and community members, are particularly promising developments that could help to counter corporate dominance in general and the rising specter of Amazon in particular.