No, Virginia, there was no Amazon worker strike

The labor protests launched by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters against Amazon over the Christmas holiday were nothing more than a hollow publicity stunt. To buttress that point, Amazon’s financial report covering that holiday period is now out and, sure enough, it indicates that the protests didn’t disrupt things for the online retailer.

Amazon reported that its net sales increased by 10 percent in the fourth quarter of 2024, rising to $187.8 billion, up from $170.0 billion for the same quarter of 2023. Looking specifically at north America, the area that the Teamsters’ protests targeted, we see that Amazon’s sales were $115.6 billion, up from $105.5 billion for the same period in 2023, also a 10 percent increase. Nor was efficiency affected. Amazon said that it delivered over 65 percent more items to its Prime service members on the same day or overnight than in 2023.

“The holiday shopping season was the most successful yet for Amazon,” declared company president Andy Jassy.

That’s not what a person might have expected from the Teamsters’ December press release that claimed it “represented” 10,000 Amazon workers at 10 warehouses and delivery stations and that it was launching the “largest-ever” strike against the retailer. Surely that many workers walking out would be a major problem for a company scrambling to ship out packages.

The union had clearly timed the announcement in the hopes that it would hurt the retailer by convincing last-minute shoppers that Amazon wouldn’t be able to make deliveries on time. It did garner headlines like CNN’s “Thousands of Amazon drivers have gone on strike in the thick of the holiday package season” and NPR’s “Amazon faces multiple pickets as union targets holiday shopping rush.” In reality, there was scant evidence that a non-trivial number of Amazon workers participated in the protests. Most long-haul truckers that carry Amazon packages are contractors who don’t work directly for the company. The “protesters” that did appear were likely Teamsters who worked for employers other than Amazon.

These bogus holiday season announcements are a long-standing trick by unions. They bank on news outlets being short-staffed and on the lookout for quick, easy stories. Unions attempting, for example, to organize Walmart for several years running in the 00s would announce that major walkouts were planned for the post-Thanksgiving “black Friday” sales. On the actual day, reporters who bothered to follow up would be pointed to protests at a few select locations that had few, if any, actual  Walmart employees.

To be fair to the journalists, some were appropriately skeptical. The New York Times headline was “Amazon Delivery Drivers at Seven Hubs Walk Out” but the subhead read, “The retail giant said it expected its operations to be largely unaffected by the strike of some drivers at contracting firms Amazon uses to deliver packages.” Still, the Teamsters got the headline they wanted.

When reading or listening to a news story about worker revolts at major corporations, the savvy media consumer should always look for the union label.