A year into a pandemic that has put them under ever more strain, yesterday, Amazon workers held a twenty-four-hour strike across Italy. In the first nationwide strike in the company’s history, workers mounted picket lines to protest exhausting work rates, despotic management-by-algorithm, and the company’s lack of accountability to its hires. The strike day was particularly historic because it involved all Amazon logistics workers, from warehouse employees to delivery drivers.

An obvious key focus for the strike was Amazon’s large distribution centers (“fulfillment centers”) where thousands of goods are stocked, picked, and packed, yet the strike extended to the mid-range sortation centers (where boxes are dispatched) and the small “last mile” delivery stations. Decisively, it also included the drivers, who are outsourced and not recognized as Amazon employees, even though they work under the direct control of its algorithms.

Claiming 75 percent participation, the one-day strike thus represented a historic moment for the labor movement — and for Amazon itself. Yet the struggle also needs to be extended, including to the international level, if it is to really hit Amazon’s logistics operations and push back against the company’s most exploitative practices.