Amazon employees worldwide will be holding a strike against the company on Black Friday, Nov. 26, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, to demand fair pay for workers, among other things.
Make Amazon Pay, a coalition that represents over 200 million workers and activists across the planet, is organizing Friday’s protest and has released a set of demands that employees are placing on both the company and the governments of the countries it operates in around the globe.
The strikes are set to take place at factories, warehouses, and outside corporate offices across the world, including sites in California, Germany, Ireland, France, and Spain.
The coalition also took exception to Amazon’s ever-expanding carbon footprint, which it says is now larger than two-thirds of all countries in the world, while the company’s growing delivery and cloud computing businesses, the coalition says, are further fueling climate change.
“Like all major corporations, Amazon’s success would be impossible without the public institutions that citizens built together over generations,” the coalition said. “But instead of giving back to the societies that helped it grow, the corporation starves them of tax revenue through its world-beating efforts at tax dodging. In 2019, Amazon paid just 1.2 percent tax in the U.S., the country it is headquartered in, up from 0 percent the two previous years.”
Make Amazon Pay published a list of 25 demands on its website that include raising wages in line with the increasing wealth of the corporation and extending paid sick leave, ending all forms of casual employment and self-employment or contractor status, offering unions access to Amazon worksites, committing to zero emissions by 2030 and paying taxes in full by “ending tax abuse through profit shifting, loopholes and the use of tax havens, and providing full tax transparency.”
The coalition also called for the immediate reinstatement of all workers who were fired from the company for “speaking up about issues concerning the health and safety of Amazon workers and customers; engaging in efforts to organize fellow workers; or due to selective enforcement of internal policies.”
“Amazon is not alone in these bad practices but it sits at the heart of a failed system that drives the inequality, climate breakdown and democratic decay that scar our age,” the coalition wrote. “The pandemic has exposed how Amazon places profits ahead of workers, society, and our planet. Amazon takes too much and gives back too little. It is time to Make Amazon Pay.”
“These groups represent a variety of interests, and while we are not perfect in any area, if you objectively look at what Amazon is doing in each one of these areas you’ll see that we do take our role and our impact very seriously. We are inventing and investing significantly in all these areas, playing a significant role in addressing climate change with the Climate Pledge commitment to be net zero carbon by 2040, continuing to offer competitive wages and great benefits, and inventing new ways to keep our employees safe and healthy in our operations network, to name just a few. Anyone can see for themselves by taking a live virtual tour at our sites,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said.
“Freedom fighters deserve a special place in the pantheon of heroes, and I can’t think of a more fitting person to honor with this gift than John Lewis, a great American leader and a man of extraordinary decency and courage,” said Bezos. “I’m thrilled to support President and Mrs. Obama and their Foundation in its mission to train and inspire tomorrow’s leaders.”
