An international union representing some Amazon workers called a strike that begins today, the busiest shopping day of the year, and goes through Monday.
The workers are calling attention to not only wages and working conditions, but the impact that Amazon has on the planet and environment, which they say is bad.
“We, workers, activists and citizens, will be rising up everywhere on the busiest shopping days of the year to fight Amazon’s exploitation of workers, our communities and the planet,” the union said. “While Amazon drained 2 billion US dollars from US communities to build new data centres, Jeff Bezos moved to Miami [from Seattle] to save 600 million US dollars in taxes,” the UNI Global Union and Progressive International said on its website.
“The Make Amazon Pay campaign brings together over 80 organisations working towards labour, tax, climate, data and racial justice, and over 400 parliamentarians and tens of thousands of supporters from across the world. Since 2020, we have organised four global days of action on Black Friday — each time growing our planetary movement to stop Amazon squeezing workers, communities and the planet. And in October 2023, we organised our first-ever Summit to Make Amazon Pay in Manchester, UK,” the union said.
Amazon said the union is intentionally misleading and promoting a false narrative.
“The fact is, at Amazon we provide great pay, great benefits, and great opportunities — all from day one,” an Amazon spokeswoman said. “We’ve created more than 1.5 million jobs around the world, and counting, and we provide a modern, safe, and engaging workplace whether you work in an office or at one of our operations buildings.”
In Seattle, the average hourly pay for Amazon warehouse jobs is $20 an hour and are as high as $25 an hour. Seattle’s minimum wage by law is $19.97/hour for large employers.
The world’s largest online seller, which started in the garage of Jeff Bezos as a seller of used books, opened its first delivery station in Alaska a year ago. The one in Anchorage gets its deliveries by air cargo, rather than by truck and it’s expected that two Amazon cargo flights a day will be moving goods through the Anchorage delivery station, and about 15,000 packages are delivered from there to the customers in Anchorage and MatSu.
About 100 workers work at the Anchorage delivery station, with another 50 temporary warehouse workers expected to be employed during the holiday season.
The facts are Jeff owns less than 10% of Amazon and is a former president and CEO of Amazon, yes he is worth 221 Billion! Now in detail “Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is owned by 60.84% institutional shareholders, 8.72% Amazon insiders, and 30.43% retail investors. Jeffrey P. Bezos is the largest individual Amazon shareholder, owning 909.71M shares representing 8.65% of the company.” This strike by now International Unions is just bribery waged against the world of consumers…this is such crap. What concern they have about tax evasion isn’t consumer’s fault its governments! Should they pay more taxes well maybe but in the end that only returns back on the backs of the consumers… wake up you union employees you got a job & fair pay the only ones that win in this action is benefits to your union bosses! What do you pay them? If you are a Amazon employee & a Amazon stock holder complain to the 60.84 % at the next AMZN corporate meeting if you want your voice to be heard! Jeff started this company in his garage you can too! Ya he is stinking rich, is being rich your real enemy? I don’t think so! I am sure the socialist union bosses will scream at my comment….blah blah blah.
“Unions” the corrupt organization that you have to pay to be a member of to get a job in their controlled areas, then they want more money through you, the workers by making you strike to get more benefits and pay raising the cost of living for everyone, everywhere. Then they find themselves not being able to afford anything so what do they do? Go on strike for more money, repeat, repeat, repeat…….
So, they belong to an international union of commies? Yet another reason I avoid shopping at Amazon.