This Year, Amazon Workers Celebrate Prime Day With Strikes and Walkouts

It's the biggest year in recent memory for unions: Around 71% of Americans approve of unions in 2022, a survey found.

Amazon’s 48-hour Prime Day event takes place across Tuesday and Wednesday, but not all Prime Day events were planned out by the ecommerce giant.

The company’s only unionized warehouse, on Staten Island, has held an impromtu strike this week, while employees at a big distribution hub in Joliet, Illinois have staged a walkout.

More actions are planned, as well: Workers at a major Amazon air hub in San Bernardino, California have announced plans to strike this Friday, citing Amazon’s failure to accept their demands and the company’s “intimidation, threats, and retaliation.”

The Illinois Walkout

The most recent worker action took place in Illinois’s third-largest city, 35 miles southwest of Chicago. A number of day-shift employees walked off the job on Tuesday, in a protest aimed at calling attention to their need for improved workplace safety rules and higher pay.

More than 600 workers in Joliet had previously signed a petition demanding wages be boosted to $25 per hour, organizers told ABC Chicago, with 50 walking off the job on Tuesday. Amazon has raised hourly warehouse staff starting pay to $19.

In addition, workers are demanding a stronger response to an incident of racial discrimination — death threats directed at Black employees had been posted in the company washroom in May. One worker at the location, Destiny Collins, explains that Amazon had installed metal detectors… but only for staff exiting the building, not those walking in.

“Even when we’re being threatened, Amazon is only worried about us stealing a few dollars worth of merchandise, not our lives. To them the only thing that’s disposable in the warehouse is us.” -Collins, in a statement to Warehouse Workers for Justice.

Amazon Retaliation? Suspensions for Staten Island Workers

A Staten Island warehouse strike, also on Tuesday, has already seen a response from Amazon: The ecommerce company is suspending around 50 workers, with pay.

Earlier in the year, according to employees at the location, which is the only unionized Amazon distribution warehouse, Amazon fired several senior managers as retaliation for organization efforts.

The workers who were suspended following the Tuesday strike don’t appear to be in danger of losing their jobs, and are continuing to be paid. But Amazon’s response indicates that the company — which has long been accused of anti-labor practices — is still pretty unhappy with labor actions even at unionized hubs.

Growing Interest in Labor Organizing

2022 is the biggest year yet in recent memory for unions: Around 71% of Americans approve of unions, a recent Gallup survey found, while requests to the National Labor Relations Board for union elections rose 58% across the first eight months of the year.

It makes sense, as pipeline delays and corporate greed have boosted the cost of living sharply in recent years, with rising gas, grocery, and rent prices all squeezing individual workers who can’t effectively bargin for a reasonable share of the value their labor creates.

Strikes at Amazon will certainly continue for the near future, and they don’t just happen by themselves. The growing pool of today’s workers who are choosing to “quiet quit” their job is the same pool that labor organizers can draw from to win further support for employee rights across the country.

Companies that don’t offer the workplace safety and pay raises those workers deserve may eventually face crises similar to those at Amazon.

Did you find this article helpful? Click on one of the following buttons
We're so happy you liked! Get more delivered to your inbox just like it.

We're sorry this article didn't help you today – we welcome feedback, so if there's any way you feel we could improve our content, please email us at contact@tech.co

Written by:
Adam is a writer at Tech.co and has worked as a tech writer, blogger and copy editor for more than a decade. He was a Forbes Contributor on the publishing industry, for which he was named a Digital Book World 2018 award finalist. His work has appeared in publications including Popular Mechanics and IDG Connect, and his art history book on 1970s sci-fi, 'Worlds Beyond Time,' is out from Abrams Books in July 2023. In the meantime, he's hunting down the latest news on VPNs, POS systems, and the future of tech.
Explore More See all news
Back to top
close Step up your business video conferencing with GoToMeeting, our top rated conferencing app – try it free for 14 days Try GoToMeeting Free