Amazon Workers Plan to Strike on Black Friday

Amazon employees in more than 20 countries around the world are preparing to strike on Black Friday, on the 26th of this month, November 2021.

The strike is part of a campaign led by “Make Amazon Pay,” a coalition of 70 trade unions and organizations, including Greenpeace, Oxfam and Amazon Worker International, according to Business Insider.

"The Coronavirus epidemic has revealed how Amazon puts profits ahead of workers, society and our planet, [and] that Amazon takes too much and gives too little, it's time to make Amazon pay," the Make Amazon Pay alliance wrote in a list of strike demands shared on its website.

 

Workers Exploitation

Previous Black Friday Strikes have occurred in several Amazon branches worldwide.

In 2018, Amazon employees in Spain went on strike on the Black Friday, the company's biggest sales day of the year. About 90% of employees at the logistics warehouse in the San Fernando de Henares area near the capital Madrid joined the strike.

Staff involved in the strike said they were protesting what they described as unfair working conditions. One of the employees involved in the strike said the company was “putting a lot of pressure on workers.”

This year’s strike plan came amid waves of depression among Amazon employees, and harsh work conditions despite being owned by the richest man in the world.

The British organization “Organise” issued a report on the status of workers in some Amazon distribution centers in Britain. It said: "Stories came to light of forced standing through 10-hour shifts, timed bathroom breaks and abusive management at Amazon.

The report says that 74% of participants avoid using bathrooms for fear of wasting time and thus not achieving the daily goal of work. 

In the US, the situation is not much better, although amazon employs more than a million people, their working conditions were investigated by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The Center said that the workers in Amazon’s warehouses suffer an injury rate twice as high as workers outside Amazon, and when some Amazon workers disclosed the company's difficult working conditions, they were fired.

 

Planned Demands

Make Amazon Pay had launched a worldwide campaign consisting of a series of events in protest to Amazon’s exploitation.

Planned actions include a massive Amazon delivery driver strike in Italy, a work stoppage across Amazon warehouses in France, demonstrations at the construction site of new Amazon regional offices in South Africa, garment worker protests across Bangladesh and Cambodia. 

In the United States, the Athena Coalition will be holding digital, and in-person Make Amazon Pay actions targeting Whole Foods and Amazon, a town hall about the future of worker organizing in California, and a worker panel in Illinois on supply chain disruptions. 

On the other side, Make Amazon Pay had published a list of demands to be fulfilled by Amazon before Black Friday.

These demands include improving the workplace by raising workers’ pay in all Amazon warehouses in line with the increasing wealth of the corporation, including hazard pay and premium pay for peak times.

It also demanded negotiating adequate break time to ensure safe work and suspending the harsh productivity and surveillance regime Amazon has used to squeeze workers, which violates their rights and jeopardizes their safety.

As for the job security to all by, Make Amazon Pay calls for ending all forms of casual employment and bogus self-employment or contractor status, and establishing decent, transparent procedures through which workers can voice concerns and criticisms without fear of punishment.

It also calls for reinstating, immediately, all workers fired for speaking up about issues concerning the health and safety of Amazon workers and customers, engaging in efforts to organize fellow workers, or due to selective enforcement of internal policies.

 

Union Coalition

Amazon is well-known for suspending any worker if he shows signs of organizing a union, rather than understanding his demands Amazon fires most workers who show similar trends.

That’s why Make Amazon Pay is standing for respecting workers’ universal rights by ending union busting, respecting workers’ right to organize, and unions’ rights to promote workers’ interests, and immediately stop all forms of spying on workers and organizers.

The strike is demanding giving unions access to Amazon worksites to inform workers on the benefits of unionization, so that all workers can freely choose whether to join a union without any fear of retaliation and bargaining with unions wherever they are present in order to reach collective agreements on the conditions and terms of workers’ employment at Amazon.

Casper Gelderblom, Make Amazon Pay coordinator at Progressive International, said: “As we are seeing all over the world, workers—whether they are coders, pickers, drivers or UX designers—are marching, striking and raising their voices together to demand the dignity and respect that comes with a union. Solidarity doesn’t scare easily, and Amazon will not break workers’ alliances.”

“From natural resource extraction to manufacturing; from shipping and storing products around the world to delivering them to consumers; from controlling untold amounts of data and management to influencing our governments: Amazon takes workers, people and the planet for a ride,” he said.

GMB union national officer Mick Rix said further actions and protests will be conducted at the company’s UK facilities, to demand “the pandemic profiteer provides safer and better work, higher pay, and allows our union to organize workers without interference.”