The amount of leverage workers have is proportional to how hard it is for the company to replace them. Replacing unskilled workers isn't that hard so those workers don't have much leverage.
The only real solution is to become skilled workers. Which, almost ironically, is to do the thing the company threatens to do -- find a way to automate work like this, so the people working at the warehouse are robotics technicians etc.
> Isn't Amazon getting to the point where they're having trouble finding employee candidates they haven't previously fired?
This apparently happened somewhere in a rural area with a small local population. It's obviously not going to happen at a warehouse in, say, New Jersey.
And to the extent that it actually happens somewhere it's not like their response would be hard to predict. Calculate how much they would have to increase local wages to expand the candidate pool enough, see if this is less than it costs to move the warehouse somewhere with a larger pool of workers, if not then move the warehouse.
Notice that Amazon warehouse workers get paid more than minimum wage. This is why. Unskilled workers don't have zero leverage, they just don't have much.
it's likely not the case here but more powerful unions can block non-union scabs from taking the jobs of striking workers (in that this is usually part of the contract the union has with the employer). at scale, unions have a lot more power to affect things
but the point is it's not about worker skill when unions are at sufficient power levels
When unions get to be that size is when they get captured by organized crime and other interests, because then they're acting as a de facto government and susceptible to the same corrupting influences but without the (by no means perfect but far better than nothing) safeguards we put on governments in modern democracies.
This is also why corporate monopolies are a fiasco and need to be prevented as well.
The general rule is "prevent any one group from consolidating too much power". If someone's solution is "let our group consolidate a huge amount of power" they're admitting they're the villains.
The only real solution is to become skilled workers. Which, almost ironically, is to do the thing the company threatens to do -- find a way to automate work like this, so the people working at the warehouse are robotics technicians etc.