Amazon workers call strike on biggest shopping weekend of the year

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.