On Black Friday, Amazon Staff in 40+ Nations Strike and Protest ‘Despicable’ Therapy

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By Jake Johnson. Initially revealed at Frequent Desires

1000’s of Amazon employees in additional than 40 nations are planning to mark Black Friday by strolling off the job and protesting the company behemoth’s abuse of staff and the local weather, in addition to its continual avoidance of taxes whereas raking in large income.

Make Amazon Pay” actions are anticipated to incorporate marches and rallies for union recognition in Bangladesh, strikes at almost 20 warehouses in France and Germany, walkouts in a dozen cities in america, and a protest by newly unionized employees in Japan.

“At present, unions, civil society, and progressive elected officers will stand shoulder to shoulder in a large world day of motion to denounce Amazon’s despicable multimillion-dollar campaigns to kill worker-led union efforts,” Christy Hoffman, president of UNI World Union, mentioned in a assertion. “It’s time for the tech large to stop their terrible, unsafe practices instantly, respect the legislation, and negotiate with the employees who need to make their jobs higher.”

Amazon spent round $4.3 million on anti-union consultants within the U.S. final 12 months because it labored to crush historic labor organizing efforts in Alabama and New York. Staff in the end voted earlier this 12 months to unionize at a Staten Island warehouse, the first-ever organized location in america.

In the meantime, Amazon averted $5 billion in federal company earnings taxes within the U.S. final 12 months, in accordance with the Institute on Taxation and Financial Coverage, as the corporate continued to shortchange and exploit its staff, who’re regularly injured on the job as they race to fulfill the corporate’s punishing productiveness metrics.

Throughout the globe, the employees who make Amazon’s huge logistics community and quite a few companies potential say they’re typically subjected to inhumane therapy and compelled to labor underneath grueling situations to earn a meager paycheck as firm executives develop richer every year. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy obtained $213 million in whole compensation in 2021.

“Garment employees, like these I characterize, toil to swell Amazon’s coffers typically with none recognition that we’re even Amazon employees,” mentioned Nazma Akhter, president of the Sommilito Clothes Sramik Federation in Bangladesh. “Amazon is the third-largest direct employer on the planet, however once you take us within the provide chain into consideration, it’s even bigger. At work we are able to face sexual harassment from administration and victimization once we attempt to manage in a commerce union in opposition to that violence and for higher pay and situations.”

“In Bangladesh, we’re on the frontline of local weather breakdown, so we all know local weather justice and social justice can’t be separated,” Akhter continued. “We have now to make Amazon pay all its employees an honest wage in dignified workplaces and for its environmental injury.”

Amazon disclosed earlier this 12 months that it emitted the equal of 71.54 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2021—doubtless a important undercount given how the corporate calculates its footprint.

“Everyone knows that the worth of every thing goes up, as is the temperature of our planet,” mentioned Daniel Kopp, Progressive Worldwide’s Make Amazon Pay coordinator. “As an alternative of paying its employees pretty, its taxes in full, and for its injury to our surroundings, Amazon is squeezing each final drop it will possibly from employees, communities, and the planet.”

In an op-ed for Jacobin on Friday, Hoffman and Akhter famous that as prices of dwelling soar worldwide, Amazon’s “hard-line stances in opposition to enhancing office situations and recognizing unions… stay unchanged.”

“Within the U.Okay., it supplied employees a ridiculous 35p elevate per hour in August—in different phrases, a large real-term pay minimize,” the pair wrote. “In France and Germany, employees additionally rejected having their pay minimize in actual phrases. Amazon made $33.3 billion in revenue in 2021, however it gained’t pay its employees a fair proportion.”

“To make Amazon pay, we are able to clearly not depend on goodwill. As an alternative, Amazon employees and their commerce unions, environmentalists, tax watchdogs, and regulators have to get collectively and struggle again. And that’s precisely what we’re seeing proper now,” Hoffman and Akhter added. “That’s why employees and organizers are uniting on November 25 in a marketing campaign to Make Amazon Pay. From america to Bangladesh, from Germany to South Africa, Amazon will face coordinated strikes and protests demanding that Amazon raises wages above inflation for all its employees, stops its union-busting, decarbonizes its entire provide chain, and pays its honest shares of taxes.”

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