Is Amazon so formidable that it can’t be beaten? Three years after Staten Island warehouse workers won a union election, Amazon’s legal machinations have blocked all bargaining. Amazon delivery drivers and warehouse workers at a handful of sites have demanded direct recognition and bargaining — only to be fired or ignored by the company. Earlier this year, Amazon deployed a full range of union-busting tactics to beat down workers in a union election in North Carolina.

Union organizers in the U.S. and elsewhere struggling to build worker power might look to their Italian counterparts for a bit of encouragement.

On Good Friday, April 18, thousands of Amazon drivers went on strike at the company’s 41 delivery stations throughout Italy, jamming up goods delivery in the run-up to the busy Easter weekend. The one-day strike was a show of strength, an escalation of worker demands for job security, safer working conditions, and an end to crushing workloads and relentless speedups.

The three unions that coordinated the job action reported driver strike participation was at 85 percent nationally, with 100 percent participation in cities like Genoa and Rimini. With an estimated 15,000 Amazon drivers in the country, that would put the number of strikers well over 10,000. “Alexa, find me a fair contract,” read one banner outside a blockaded Amazon facility in Rome. “Jeff, less space and more drivers,” read another in Milan.

The drivers are placing their demands before Assoespressi, the association of delivery companies, as well as Amazon. As in the U.S. and elsewhere, Amazon Italy contracts out last-mile delivery to a slew of companies. These firms hire the drivers, though Amazon sets the working conditions. Assoespressi has met with the three union federations organizing at Amazon — CGIL, CISL and UIL — but has refused to budge on the workers’ core issues. Striking drivers said their April 18 action was intended to force both Assoespressi and Amazon to bargain for better working conditions, including job security for all drivers.

“This strike was important to show both Amazon, Assoespressi and also ourselves, that we actually have the power to go on a nationwide strike, and achieve such participation as well,” a Bologna driver, who requested that we not use his name due to fear of reprisal, told Truthout.

Many Italian drivers for Amazon are hired on temporary one- and three-month contracts, especially during peak seasons. This is identical to Amazon’s warehouse divide-and-exploit practice in the U.S., where the company hires “seasonal” workers, with lower pay and fewer benefits than “permanent” workers, but keeps them on for half a year or more at the lower status. In Italy, using its notorious algorithmically driven work quotas, Amazon pits temporary contract drivers against one another by ranking them for “productivity.” This pushes workers to try to outpace one another to qualify for a new employment contract.

Amazon has been increasing workloads for permanent workers as well. “When they hired me six years ago, I left [the delivery station] with a maximum of 100-120 packages,” striking driver Claudio Simini told Corriere di Bologna, a local newspaper in northern Italy “Lately, for the same salary, I have carried around more than 300 packages.”

In addition to demanding lower package loads, the drivers are calling for increased daily travel allowances between municipalities from 20 to 22 euros, and the right to stop driving during severe flooding and other “red weather alert” periods, which are becoming more common with climate change.

On the strike day, drivers picketed and in some cases blocked Amazon delivery stations with their own vehicles. Outside Amazon’s Bologna delivery station, dozens of drivers milled about, their private vehicles blockading all traffic while police stood by helplessly. “No money, no pacchi [packages]” one poster read.

“It was a warning strike, but we still need to wait for Assoespressi and the three confederal unions to meet again. It would be absolutely important to escalate if another door closes, but we also have to see how much the unions are willing to compromise and whether they will call it or not,” the Bologna driver who requested anonymity said.

Last week’s walkout was not the largest ever Italian strike against Amazon — that was in March 2021, the first national walkout, involving workers in warehouses, hubs and delivery stations, leading to the first-ever collective bargaining agreement between unions and the corporate behemoth. That contract secured additional rights covering health and safety, workload, working time, and increased pay and bonuses for warehouse workers and drivers.

The 2021 strike, in turn, wasn’t the first time Italian Amazon workers hit the picket lines. They’ve been exercising their strike muscles since 2017, including, notably, a 13-day strike in the northern city of Piacenza at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic that forced Amazon to agree to masks, gloves, social distancing, and other health measures.

Compare the Italian national strike experience to the situation in the U.S., where smaller groups of 80 to 100 drivers have gone on strike at individual worksites, only to find themselves out of work when Amazon slashed delivery company contracts. Last December, when the Teamsters union announced strikes at eight U.S. Amazon facilities, only about 600 workers participated. These December strikes built worker confidence on the picket lines and sparked conversations at many warehouses nationally. But their scope is dramatically smaller than those of the strike actions occurring in Italy.

It certainly is true that the legal system is more favorable for workers organizing in Italy, where laws mandate national bargaining by the industrial sector. This is in part a product of the country’s post-WWII constitution. But Peter Olney, a veteran U.S. labor organizer who has spent significant time working with Italian unions, said the difference is also “because of the historical power of the largely Communist-led labor movement” that emerged from the anti-fascist struggle for liberation.

In Italy, Amazon is party to national sectoral agreements, covering wages and working conditions.

However, the availability of legal support for workers is far from sufficient to make the struggle easy for Italian workers. As elsewhere, Amazon uses algorithmic management to force speedups and temporary contract schemes to keep workers divided in Italian worksites. Italian laws limit or prohibit strikes, and officials in the confederated trade unions often act as a brake on worker militancy and direct action, settling contracts short of worker demands.

“We’ve seen union officials in the past settle agreements short of what we need,” said the driver in Bologna with whom Truthout spoke. “It’s good that they are talking about our safety, hours and travel allowance, but they shouldn’t lose sight of job security and higher salary for all drivers. Drivers I work with are concerned that the union officials might negotiate an agreement on some issues but not resolve the bigger problems.”

And, just as U.S. workers are contending with Donald Trump’s hostility to workers and unions, Italian workers have to contend with the hard-right government of Giorgia Meloni, who has served as prime minister of Italy since 2022. Her government is cracking down on people protesting the war in Ukraine and the Israeli state’s genocide against Palestinians, and in doing so is also tightening control over worker protests. Two weeks before the strike, Meloni issued a new decree that purported to protect “public safety” but in reality was aimed directly at suppressing workers and their unions. Among other measures, the new law provides for up to two years of prison time for workers who block streets — precisely the tactic exercised by the striking Amazon workers.

The vital organizing lesson coming out of Italy is that Amazon can be forced to bargain — not through single-site organizing or sporadic job actions, but through ambitious regional and national strikes that shut down the company’s distribution network.

How these large strikes will look, precisely, will vary from one country to another. But to force Amazon to bargain, there must be disruptive actions; there are no shortcuts to building worker power at Amazon.

In the U.S., where Amazon has around 1,445 facilities — 22 times the number in Italy — organizing, striking and disrupting the Amazon supply chain will require resources far beyond the Teamsters’ annual organizing commitment of $8 million.

While struggles in each nation are shaped by the legal, political and organizing terrain particular to that country, more needs to be done to encourage Amazon workers to learn from one another and build transnational organizing.

For years, Amazon workers have been meeting each other in Europe and beyond. In 2019, the Transnational Social Strike Platform — an international exchange of workers and organizers — published an ebook, Strike The Giant, which collected detailed examples of Amazon organizing struggles from different countries.

Three weeks ago, many of these Amazon workers and organizers, spanning eight countries from Asia to North America to Europe, gathered in Germany under the banner of Amazon Workers International to share experiences and advance organizing plans. Coalitions of established labor federations like UNI Global Union and Progressive International also have convened Amazon organizing discussions and actions in recent years.

Given the size and power of Amazon, these transnational relationships are critical. For now, the Italian workers have shown Amazon workers everywhere that it is possible to build worker power and wrest concessions from the company through large-scale, disruptive actions.

Truthout