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The Amazon Labor Union and the Teamsters have signed an affiliation agreement. “Today is an historical day for labor in America as we now combine forces with one of the most powerful unions to take on Amazon together,” wrote ALU President Chris Smalls on Twitter, now called X. “We’re putting Amazon on notice that we are coming!” Smalls and Teamsters President Sean O’Brien signed the agreement on June 3, according to a copy obtained by Labor Notes. The affiliation agreement charters a new local known as Amazon Labor Union No.

July 18, 2024 Update: The union lost but came heartbreakingly close: 49.5 percent yes votes, just 28 votes short of winning recognition. Three thousand warehouse workers are poised to become the first recognized Amazon union in Britain. Workers at fulfillment center BHX4 in Coventry, central England, cast votes July 8-13 for the GMB union to negotiate over pay, hours, and working conditions with the Amazon bosses. The results are expected July 17. The watershed vote comes after a long, bruising battle; Amazon tried U.S.-style stalling and union-busting tactics.

Amazon workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island, New York, voted to elect reform officers in the first-ever leadership election. “We are extremely excited to announce that every candidate on our reform caucus slate won decisively in our union’s leadership elections,” said Connor Spence, co-founder of the Amazon Labor Union and former treasurer, who won the presidency.

Sixteen months after his illegal firing, Juan Vargas walked into work in June to cheers and pats on the back from his co-workers at the Anthony Marano Company, a major produce distributor in the Chicago area. He won full back pay. “They fired me because they wanted to intimidate the other workers,” said Vargas in Spanish. “But with my reinstatement, we have won two against the company,” meaning his job and a better contract won through organizing. With 23 years at the company, Vargas, a Teamsters Local 703 member, had led the charge to organize for a stronger contract in 2023.

Contracts come and contracts go, but the bosses keep on scheming forever. So workers’ resistance must be permanent. In August, 17 union locals representing tens of thousands of workers charged the automaker Stellantis with failing to honor its agreements by reneging on investment promises, including the celebrated reopening of the Belvidere assembly plant in Illinois. Today, the United Auto Workers filed unfair labor practice charges against Stellantis with the National Labor Relations Board over the company’s refusal to provide information about its plans for product commitments.

An estimated 600 Amazon workers went on a short strike or participated in pickets from December 19 to Christmas Eve across eight warehouse locations, from Queens to San Francisco. The coordinated mobilization was an opening salvo to Amazon, and a test of capacity for the Teamsters’ growing national network.

An estimated 600 Amazon workers went on a short strike or participated in pickets from December 19 to Christmas Eve across eight warehouse locations, from Queens to San Francisco. The coordinated mobilization was an opening salvo to Amazon, and a test of capacity for the Teamsters’ growing national network.

Two hundred union workers, out of 5,700 who assemble dishwashers, refrigerators, washers, and dryers for GE Appliances-Haier at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, received notice this month that the Trump administration is revoking their work authorizations. The immigrant workers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela have received a mixed reaction to their imminent deportation—hostility from some co-workers and an outpouring of support from their union and the local labor movement. They’re part of the Communications Workers’ industrial division, IUE-CWA Local 83761.

Volkswagen has dug in its heels in first-contract negotiations at its assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where workers won a landslide victory in last year’s union drive. “We’re still waiting for the company to agree to a proposal that simply affords us a fair share,” auto worker Steve Cochran testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on October 8. “We are living with health care that forces people into bankruptcy.

Solidarity between workers is the lifeblood of a fighting labor movement. The workplace throws us together regardless of culture, race, gender, and language; we may have little in common but the need to earn a livelihood. But working shoulder to shoulder, we forge genuine bonds. By breaking bread together or facing down tyrannical supervisors together, we build trust. We begin to generate a class culture, to establish norms for behavior on the job. Everywhere I’ve ever worked, I got my real orientation not from H.R. but from my co-workers.