A unionization drive at Amazon was never going to be easy — the Teamsters acknowledged enough when they voted in 2021 to make organizing the e-commerce behemoth a top priority.

Not only do over 1 million people work for Amazon across the United States, making it the second largest private employer in the country, but the company has shown a willingness to use every trick in the book — and often ones outside of it — to stifle organizing.

But over the last few months, the Teamsters have quietly made significant gains in their campaign to represent the warehouse workers and delivery drivers that make the vast package network tick. 

That second category of workers has been the site of one of the biggest breakthroughs for the Teamsters. Amazon has long maintained that it does not need to negotiate with workers it contracts through delivery service providers (DSPs) to get packages to customers’ homes despite dictating the terms and conditions of their employment.

The National Labor Relations Board ruled this summer that Amazon is a joint employer of those delivery drivers, setting the stage for subcontracted workers around the country to join the Teamsters.

That finding was made in a case brought by workers hired through Battle-Tested Strategies to distribute packages from Amazon’s Palmdale, California, facility. When the 84 workers became the first group of Amazon delivery drivers to form a union in April 2023, Amazon unceremoniously ended its contract with the subcontractor, effectively terminating their jobs.

Following that ruling, hundreds of drivers across the eight subcontractors at Amazon’s Queens, New York, distribution center have announced majority internal support for unionizing. The workers are demanding to be recognized as one collective bargaining unit.

“Amazon drivers like me are the face of Amazon. We’re the workers delivering your packages to your door,” Jeffrey Arias, one of the drivers, said last week. “It’s time Amazon stops treating us as disposable and creates a space where we can discuss grievances in an equitable way. We need a fair and livable wage and affordable medical care.”

Delivery drivers at an Amazon facility in Skokie, Illinois, also went on strike this summer.

Making inroads with the over quarter of a million drivers subcontracted by Amazon would make negotiating with the company over their conditions and pay far easier.

Although the Teamsters have been the leading union on Amazon, they were not the first to successfully organize a unit in a warehouse. That distinction goes to the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), an independent outfit that drew national headlines when it decisively won an election at a Staten Island fulfillment center in 2021.

Things turned sour for the ALU after that victory though, as infighting over how leadership of the unit should be determined threatened to derail the whole effort.

The union shook things up this summer by electing a reform caucus into leadership and voting overwhelmingly to affiliate with the Teamsters, bringing much needed financial and organizational resources to efforts to not just be the first union at Amazon but the first with a collective bargaining agreement.

Amazon has refused to recognize or begin contract negotiations with the union representing some 5,500 warehouse workers so far.

Forcing Amazon to the table, defeating its endless waves of legal challenges along the way, is still a major challenge for the Teamsters. But with each successful union drive labor’s leverage over the company grows.

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