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.
You are right on Ed. Most of these union strikes are doing nothing but waging war against the consumers. That moron at the UAW who used the term eat the rich really pissed me off. Almost all of these rich people took huge gambles to start these companies, I’m no fan of Jeff Bazos but he definitely created a winner. The recent Boeing strikes are suspect. I keep wondering which investment fund is trying to break their back. Carlyle, black rock, birkshire ?? And why, boeing is an American institution. Owned by millions of small time stock holders . I’m not against private sector unions but I’m I’m against strong armed tactics and crooked union bosses. It was fun to see the teamsters supporting trump finally.
“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.
If I thought my employer was such a horrible company as they believe Amazon is, I would have to find me another job that would pay me more, give me more benefits and would appease all my ideologies so that I could enjoy my job and my life. I then wouldn’t be the depressed, miserable person that others find horrible to work with, and I could then fight the big, bad wolf to my full extent. Seems to me that they are biting the hand that feeds them!
From what I understand, conditions at Amazon are poor. I don’t blame them for wanting better treatment.
Problem is, we’re in an unstable economy. It would be very easy for Amazon to just make them all go away and start over with illegals. Probably not a good idea to strike right now.
It also doesn’t help they have surrounded themselves with the usual leftist suspects, devaluing their claims.
Well, if climate is going to be the issue, I’ll need to stop ordering Amazon who ships me one item on my whim, packaged individually and runs the truck & driver all over to deliver directly to me. Shopping locally should build local inventory, keep my community small businesses more viable, and the freight can come in bulk, and with less packaging. But of course I will be picking up my purchases and won’t need a delivery driver.
Delay service to the areas these fine folks are striking in. Reroute goods purchased to fulfill other orders and refund those impacted.
Review again in 90 days.
Labor unions are parasites. They stand on the sideline until a business is successful and then swoop in for a financial reward. I doubt if anyone can name a union that invested in a fledgling business. Union complaints about social issues are simply an excuse for a work action. Unions are big business pushing a product nobody wants.
If these groups had their way you would be prohibited from moving from a high tax jurisdiction to a lower tax jurisdiction without paying large tax penalties. Or they would mandate everywhere be high tax jurisdictions so there would be no place to escape to. Gauranteed. That was what the Berlin Wall was all about. Holding people in…not out.
The main item in the story is “Killing the goose”, forget the golden eggs.
It is contrary to the preservation of one’s livelihood to embark on a manufactured disruption of a business under the guise of “protest”. When the disrupters pushing the “world view” crap negatively engage a huge employer, no good thing will come of it.
Commentary from the hinterlands will never amount to so much as a “puff of gas” in a gale of wind. Regardless, if you give “vent” to yourselves, your overlords may very well give you a handful of oats or a lump of sugar.
I don’t know about the rest of the Amazon employee but as a group the Amazon truck drivers do not deserve even a nickle more. As a OTR truck driver I’ll share with you what every other truck driver thinks when he see’s an amazon truck coming:
GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!!
Love to see this. We call it Scamazon! Cheap Chinese goods sold under fake names who cares
“Jeff Bezos moved from Seattle to Miami to save millions in taxes.” The horror! Does this make Jeff Bezos a bad guy? Apparently. Me thinks Seattle has the problem if it can’t keep tax-paying citizens local!