thatdiabolicalfeminist:

A really common strike tactic in the pre-internet days was form a
picket line. Basically, the striking workers would hold up signs
explaining their strike and surround their place of work with a line of
people all chanting and marching. This not only got the public
interested in the strike, but it also physically blocked people from
entering the business they were striking against.

When
workers strike, businesses sometimes hire “scabs”, or workers willing to
step in and replace the strikers to make the strike meaningless. A
picket line would mean that even if the business got a full complement
of scabs, they would still take a huge hit financially during the
strike.

“Never cross a picket line” is something union and
other pro-labour parents used to teach their children, and it meant both
“never be a scab” and also “never patronize a business currently under strike.”

Amazon will likely
hire scabs during a widespread strike to pick up at least some of the
slack. But this time, workers can’t use a physical picket line to block
access, because Amazon is an online business. But it’s still important
to make sure the company isn’t able to bring in a lot of profits during
the strike – hence the calls for boycott online.

Amazon knows they need their employees. They just think they can get away with abusing them. The boycott and the strike are not to convince them to think anything, it’s to make it so unprofitable to continue that they have no choice but to concede to the strikers’ demands.