Three years after workers at Amazon’s Staten Island JFK8 warehouse made history by voting to form the company’s first U.S. union, they’re still fighting for a first contract. Despite the workers' decisive victory and their recently-formed alliance with the Teamsters, Amazon has refused to come to the bargaining table, prolonging a standoff that has become a test case for the future of organized labor at the retail giant.

"You have to look at the landscape and realize that it's an uphill battle for unions," says Sean Fontes, an employment litigation attorney with Partridge, Snow & Hahn, and formerly the general counsel for the Rhode Island Department of Labor.

As Fontes points out, less than 10% of the United States workforce had union representation in 2024, compared to more than 20% in 1983, and 35% at the peak of the organized labor movement in the 1950s. In 2024, the rate of union membership among private sector workers was just under 6%, despite a 2025 survey of 1,200 hourly employees from workforce management platform Legion Technologies showing that a quarter of workers wished that there had been a unionization effort at their current or former employer. 

"If the employee is feeling as though their employer is not hearing them, then they seek that third party representation," says Legion Technologies director of employee engagement Traci Chernoff. "When companies ignore those concerns from employees, all it does is delay the inevitable."

Few workplaces illustrate that point more than Amazon’s fulfillment centers. Although union campaigns at Amazon's warehouses date back more than a decade, the bulk of those efforts have taken place after the pandemic, which put a spotlight on conditions inside the company's fulfillment centers. That culminated in a 2024 U.S. Senate probe, which accused the company of manipulating workplace injury data to portray its warehouses as safer than they actually are, and found that Amazon workers were nearly twice as likely to be injured on the job, compared to facilities operated by the rest of the warehousing industry.

The Senate's investigation focused on an internal study conducted by Amazon, known as Project Soteria. After the project identified a direct link between speed and injuries in the company's warehouses, senior leaders reportedly denied requests from researchers to pause disciplinary measures for workers who failed to meet speed requirements. Project Soteria then recommended slowing down the pace for workers, which leadership was said to have rejected. A separate team was tasked by Amazon to audit the project's findings, and asserted that workplace injuries were actually due to the "frailty" of certain employees. 

As calls for organized labor have grown across the company, Amazon has made it a priority to stamp out union activity across its warehouses and distribution centers, even going so far as to spend more than $14 million on anti-union consultants in 2022, according to financial disclosures published by the Huffington Post in 2023. And as union efforts have ramped up, allegations of illegal union busting have followed the company in the wake of nearly every vote. In 2022, a federal court ruled that Amazon had illegally fired JFK8 worker Gerald Bryson in retaliation for his role as a union organizer, with the court ordering the company to reinstate him with back pay. That same year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had violated federal laws by suggesting that unions leave workers "less empowered."

Over the course of the fight for unionization at JFK8, the NLRB also ruled that Amazon had violated U.S. labor laws by altering the work assignments of pro-union employees, illegally interrogating employees regarding union activity, appealing to racial stereotypes to discourage unionization, and prohibiting employees from distributing union literature. And although JFK8 workers ended up winning their union vote in 2022, there's a reason that other warehouses haven't been able to capitalize on that momentum.

"Grassroots unionizing is hard," says Keith McCown, an employment law attorney with Morgan, Brown & Joy. "A sophisticated employer will conduct a typical campaign where they try to persuade workers that they don't need a union — that's not the easiest sell, but it tends to work when it's done right, and it makes a 'vote yes' campaign challenging for workers."

Proof of that can be seen in any number of failed union efforts at Amazon warehouse over the last four years, including a 618-380 vote against unionizing at JFK8's neighboring LDJ5 Staten Island warehouse in 2022, a 406-206 vote at Albany's ALB1 facility that same year, and a decisive 2,447-829 vote to not unionize at Garner, North Carolina's RDU1 warehouse in early 2025. 

Even JFK8's successful union vote has yet to yield results three years later, despite the NLRB denying numerous legal challenges from Amazon. And as Amazon has successfully drawn the process out in court, the ALU has been bogged down by infighting, all while its legal funds have rapidly dwindled. In June 2024, the group sought outside help by voting to affiliate with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who helped organize strikes at nine Amazon facilities in December 2024 in hopes of forcing Amazon to engage in contract negotiations. As of today, Amazon has yet to formally recognize the union, or agree to collective bargaining talks. 

Elsewhere, attempts to unionize at Amazon remain an uphill battle. The February 2025 vote at North Carolina's RDU1 warehouse was the largest union push the company has faced thus far, and workers at the facility have since accused Amazon of interfering with the vote-counting process, although those allegations have not been substantiated. In Bessemer, Alabama, workers are set for their third union vote in four years, after the NLRB found that Amazon had improperly influenced two previous votes through illegal surveillance, threats to close the facility, and confiscating union materials. Amazon has appealed that decision, which is awaiting a decision from the NLRB. 

In a statement issued to SupplyChainBrain, Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards said that the company's employees "have the choice of whether or not to join a union."

"They always have," she added. "We favor opportunities for each person to be respected and valued as an individual, and to have their unique voice heard by working directly with our team. The fact is, Amazon already offers what many unions are requesting: competitive pay, health benefits on day one, and opportunities for career growth. We look forward to working directly with our team to continue making Amazon a great place to work."

For now, JFK8 stands as both a milestone and warning: Winning an election represents a hard-fought victory on its own, but forcing a first contract from a company with Amazon's resources and influence is another matter entirely. What happens next will decide if Staten Island becomes the blueprint for future efforts, or a cautionary tale for Amazon's employees across the country.