Amazon has agreed to a nationwide settlement with the National Labor Relations Board resolving charges that it illegally punished warehouse workers for striking. Under the Amazon Teamsters union settlement announced on March 31, 2026, the company must restore attendance hours it docked from strikers, promise not to retaliate against workers who walk off the job in the future, and post notices about workers’ legal rights at its U.S. facilities. Amazon did not admit wrongdoing.1https://www.cnbc.com/
The Attendance Policy at the Center of the Case
Amazon warehouses run on an attendance system built around a bank of hours called Unpaid Time, or UPT. Workers draw on UPT when they miss a scheduled shift for any reason. If the balance hits zero, they can be fired.
When Teamsters-represented workers began walking off the job in late 2024, Amazon’s automated system deducted UPT from every striker as though they had simply failed to show up. The deductions were automatic, and Amazon made no effort to reverse them for workers engaged in legally protected activity. An NLRB administrative law judge ruled in February 2025 that the policy, while facially neutral, violated the National Labor Relations Act “as applied,” because Amazon knew the absences stemmed from protected strikes and did nothing to restore the hours.
The ruling came in a consolidated proceeding, lead case 04-CA-297653, that bundled nine separate charges filed by Amazonians United South Jersey, the Amazon Labor Union, the Teamsters, and other worker organizations. The lead charge dated back to June 2022, and the conduct picked up sharply during the 2024 holiday season, when workers at seven facilities walked out on December 19 after the Teamsters set and Amazon ignored a bargaining deadline. Picket lines went up in New York City, Atlanta, San Francisco, Skokie, Illinois, and three Southern California locations, and the union said local pickets extended to hundreds of additional fulfillment centers.
What the Settlement Requires
The March 2026 agreement, reached in NLRB-mediated sessions, sets out three concrete obligations.
First, Amazon must restore the UPT hours it deducted from workers who joined strikes or work stoppages. CNBC reported that more than 100 employees will have their balances put back.1https://www.cnbc.com/
Second, Amazon agreed not to fire or otherwise discriminate against employees whose UPT balances went negative because they participated in a strike.
Third, the company must post a notice in employee break rooms informing workers of their legal right to organize and laying out the specific terms of the agreement.
Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards told CNBC, “While we believe our team managed these situations appropriately, we’ve agreed to resolve the matter so we can move forward.”1https://www.cnbc.com/
How Many Facilities Does It Cover?
The two sides describe the reach of the deal very differently, and that gap matters for any worker trying to figure out whether the settlement protects them.
The Teamsters said the agreement sets a new standard across all 1,300 U.S. Amazon facilities, so that any worker at any location can strike without losing UPT. Amazon told FreightWaves that the deal covers only 12 facilities and called the union’s broader description “misinformation.”2https://www.freightwaves.com/
The NLRB has not publicly resolved the discrepancy. The administrative law judge’s earlier recommended order had called for notices to be posted at “all its facilities in the United States,” and the agency’s complaint had described Amazon’s attendance policy as one that “threatens employees nationwide.” Until the board clarifies the point or a subsequent ruling tests it, workers at facilities outside the 12 Amazon acknowledges should treat the protection as contested rather than settled.
What It Means for Workers Who Want to Strike
For workers at facilities the settlement plainly covers, the practical change is that a legally protected strike can no longer feed the UPT clock toward termination. Amazon has committed in writing not to dock time for strike participation and not to fire workers whose balances went negative because of it. The required break-room notice is intended to make those rights visible on the warehouse floor rather than buried in a policy document.
The Teamsters have framed the deal as an organizing tool. Robert Moore, a warehouse worker at the San Francisco facility, said in a union statement that “Amazon workers everywhere should know that thanks to this settlement, they too can become Teamsters without losing their Unpaid Time.” The union said nearly 10,000 Amazon workers had organized with the Teamsters over the preceding two years.
What the Settlement Does Not Do
The agreement resolves the UPT retaliation charges. It does not settle several other live disputes between Amazon and the Teamsters, and workers should not read it as doing so.
It does not force Amazon to bargain with any union. A separate NLRB ruling on April 1, 2026 ordered Amazon to begin contract negotiations with ALU-IBT Local 1 at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, where workers voted 2,654 to 2,131 to unionize in April 2022 and later affiliated with the Teamsters. Amazon has refused to comply, saying it is “confident an unbiased court will overturn the original certification,” and is pursuing the standard employer route of declining to bargain in order to force circuit-court review of the union’s certification.
It does not cover delivery drivers. Amazon contracts last-mile delivery to Delivery Service Partners, and a separate joint-employer case involving drivers at Battle Tested Strategies in Palmdale, California ended in a May 2026 NLRB-forced settlement that allowed Amazon to avoid the joint-employer classification while paying back wages. The Teamsters called that deal a “sham” and said they would pursue appeals.
And it does not change the broader picture at Amazon. JFK8 remains the only Amazon facility in the country where workers have voted to unionize. A February 2025 election at the RDU1 warehouse in Garner, North Carolina went against the union 2,447 to 829.
The Enforcement Backdrop
The value of the settlement to workers depends in part on how vigorously the NLRB enforces it, and the agency’s posture has shifted. President Trump appointed Marvin Kaplan as NLRB chair and terminated Board Member Gwynne Wilcox in January 2025, leaving the board without a quorum for most of the year. The Senate restored a quorum in December 2025 by confirming James Murphy and Scott Mayer as members and Crystal Carey as General Counsel, giving the board a Republican majority.
Carey issued a guidance memo in February 2026 directing NLRB staff to limit requests for enhanced remedies such as nationwide notice postings to exceptional cases, to stop aggressively prosecuting cases over the “mere maintenance” of arguably overbroad workplace rules, and to take a more flexible approach to settlements. The memo does not name Amazon, but its provisions bear directly on the kind of remedy the Amazon settlement contains, and labor observers have said the new board is likely to revisit rulings that went against the company.
Workers relying on the settlement’s protections should keep two things in mind. The written commitments Amazon made are enforceable against the company on their own terms. But the scope dispute over whether the deal reaches 12 facilities or 1,300, and any future test of that question, will be resolved by a board whose enforcement priorities have moved in Amazon’s direction.