Amazon faces protests and strikes from thousands of workers across 40 countries
Thousands of Amazon warehouse workers in more than 40 countries across the US, UK, India, Japan, Australia, South Africa and Europe are taking part in a campaign called "Make Amazon Pay” that's marked by protests and strikes.
The campaign coincides with Black Friday sales, which marks the start of the Christmas shopping season after Thanksgiving Day and is one of the busiest times of the year for online shopping.
These protests come as a result of the high inflation and rise in the cost of living that has happened over the past few years while the wages for Amazon workers have not kept up with the rising costs and inflation, making it difficult for employees to even cover their basic expenses.
The campaign is being coordinated by an international coalition of trade unions, with the support of environmental and civil society groups, according to a Bloomberg report.
A group of activists and Amazon workers are also reportedly planning to protest in front of one of the residences owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, in New York City, it said.
"On Black Friday, in what has already been named #MakeAmazonPay day, unions, civil society and progressive elected officials will stand shoulder to shoulder in a massive global day of action to denounce Amazon's despicable multimillion-dollar campaigns to kill worker-lead union efforts,” Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of UNI Global Union, a group leading the protests, said in a statement.
“It's time for the tech giant to cease their awful, unsafe practices immediately, respect the law and negotiate with the workers who want to make their jobs better,” he added.
As per Bloomberg, Monika di Silvestre, an official associated with the labour campaign said that the workers at Amazon are specifically concerned about Amazon’s use of computer system
"The workers are under a lot of pressure with these algorithms. It doesn't differentiate between workers, whether they are old or have limited mobility. Workers stay awake at night thinking only of their productivity stats, she said.
The company also joined the bigtech layoffs bandwagon as it said last week that it is shedding workers as part of efforts to control costs. A source familiar with the matter told New York Times that Amazon could cut about 10,000 jobs, including in its retail, devices and human-resources divisions. The cuts would affect roughly 3% of its corporate staff and don’t appear likely to affect its hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers.
There were also reports that the retail giant has asked some of the Indian employees to resign voluntarily and leave with monetary benefits. As per the reports, several Indian employees plan for Voluntary Separation Program (VSP), asking them to resign voluntarily instead of the company terminating their contract. The company is also shutting down its or edtech service or online learning vertical, Amazon Academy, in the country in a phased manner starting August 2023.