Italian Amazon Workers Strike and Win. Will Unions Elsewhere Follow Suit?
Source: Truthout
Unions in the US and elsewhere must make huge resource investments to build up the working-class strike muscle.
By Laura Montanari & Jonathan Rosenblum , Truthout
PublishedAugust 14, 2025
Amazon may be one of the most powerful corporations in the history of capitalism, but even its executives must bend when confronted with disruptive worker power.
That’s the lesson out of Italy, where Amazon delivery drivers ratified a new agreement in July that improves pay and job rights and will reduce working hours slightly. The agreement, negotiated between three Italian unions and the association of contracted Amazon delivery companies, came in the aftermath of a powerful driver strike on April 18, Good Friday, which shut down the Amazon network throughout the country.
The new terms for drivers augment the Amazon collective bargaining agreement hammered out in 2021 between the company and Italian unions following a national strike of warehouse workers and drivers. That contract secured rights covering health and safety, workload, and working times. It increased pay and bonuses for warehouse workers and drivers, and built on top of the national logistics sector wage agreement that Amazon is signatory to.
This latest agreement will gradually improve driver pay and performance bonuses over the next three years. It will shorten the full-time work week from 42 to 41 hours, though not until 2027. Workers also made modest gains in getting Amazon’s representatives to increase the percentage of workers covered by long-term contracts — those with greater job security under Italian law — from 60 to 65 percent of the workforce, thereby reducing the number of highly exploitative temporary contract positions. Additionally, workers won the right to stop work during floods or excessive heat waves — “red weather alerts,” a more common occurrence nowadays with climate change. And, in the new agreement, work on some holidays will now be voluntary.
Amazon drivers strike in Bologna, Italy, on April 18, 2025. The picket sign calls for higher pay and lighter package loads for drivers.
Giuseppe Picconetti
Read more: https://truthout.org/articles/italian-amazon-workers-strike-and-win-will-unions-elsewhere-follow-suit/
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