Black Friday brought in huge profits for the billionaire, Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon, but also sparked a movement that united warehouse workers, environmental activists and advocates of racial, tax, and data justice around the world to seek adequate wages from Amazon.
The pandemic may have limited the crowd at stores and given a boost to online shopping, especially with the arrival of the holiday season. However, workers at Amazon, which expects to rake in more than $ 70 billion from pandemic sales alone, received only a marginal increases in their wages, reveals an article by Casper Gelderblom — a coordinator at Progressive International and a researcher at the European University Institute — that was published in The Guardian.
The Company allegedly monitors its warehouse workers closely and pulls them up for drop in productivity. It spies on them and thwarts any attempt by the workers to organise themselves.
Some reports also claim that workers are allowed very short breaks, which even forces them to urinate in bottles. However, Amazon has refuted all these reports and claims.
Meanwhile, workers across Amazon’s supply chain are collectively seeking justice, under the aegis of the UNI Global Union, Amazon Workers International, PSI, IndustriALL, the Athena Coalition and the International Trade Union Confederation. Producers in Bangladesh, tech workers in Seattle, warehouse employees across Europe, and even employees from Amazon’s call centre in the Philippines have become part of this worldwide movement to ensure that Amazon pays its workers adequate compensation and allows them the right to organise .
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