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Yearly, on the fourth Friday of November, the American idea of ‘Black Friday’ kicks off the Christmas procuring season all world wide, providing reductions on a variety of merchandise.
However since 2020, Black Friday has taken on a distinct sort of blackness for corporations like Amazon — it is also the beginning of a number of days of motion in opposition to the world’s greatest on-line retailer.
On this 12 months’s Black Friday (24 November), strikes, protests and different actions are going down in additional than 30 international locations, from Spain, Germany, or Denmark to India and the US, calling on Amazon to make main modifications to its enterprise mannequin.
“Day-after-day, we face the identical challenges in our Amazon warehouse — low wages, excessive stress, and an absence of respect for our rights,” mentioned Rainer Reising, one in all its staff in Germany.
Three years in the past, staff, residents and greater than 80 organisations united in a marketing campaign referred to as ,mMake Amazon Pay to demand honest wages, honest taxes and extra accountability for its affect on the planet.
For the fifth 12 months in a row, the multinational paid no tax in its Luxembourg headquarters after making €50bn in income in 2022, campaigners mentioned.
“We wish Amazon to listen to us loud and clear: it is time to make modifications for the higher,” Reising mentioned.
Amazon is price $1.52bn [€1.58bn, stock market capitalisation calculated with Wall Street still closed], and its founder, Jeff Bezos, is likely one of the prime three wealthiest individuals on this planet, with a web price of about $170bn as of November 2023.
“Amazon can afford to pay, however solely will if we make it,” reads one of many messages of the marketing campaign.
Some already see issues altering for the corporate based by Bezos, no less than within the EU.
New analysis from Company Europe Observatory (CEO), LobbyControl and SOMO reveals that Amazon’s rising world attain is going through a backlash, to which the retail large is responding by increasing its lobbying energy within the EU and its member states.
Since 2013, the corporate has spent no less than €18.8m lobbying European establishments via think-tanks, consultancy corporations, or public relations campaigns.
Its lobbying spending within the EU nonetheless lags behind that of Meta (previously Fb), Apple, Google and Microsoft. Nevertheless, when trying extra intently at lobbying on the nationwide degree, Amazon spent €3.6m in 2022 in simply two of its largest EU markets, France and Germany.
Amazon has company pursuits starting from digital coverage to sustainability, employment and company accountability, and has expanded its energy networks accordingly lately.
They at present make use of 14 PR corporations, based on information from Lobbyfacts.eu.
The retailer has additionally elevated its funding of think-tanks to fifteen, together with the Brussels-based Bruegel, an financial assume tank.
Its tentacles of affect even attain into the EU establishments, based on analysis by CEO, LobbyControl and SOMO.
Within the final mandate alone, Amazon visited the Berlaymont constructing 46 occasions, 19 of them to fulfill EU commissioners.
MEPs additionally met representatives of the US large 106 occasions, principally with the Renew Group (32), the S&D (28) and the EPP (24), as recorded by ParlTrack.
“That is solely a fraction of the entry Amazon has to the EU’s establishments,” CEO harassed.
The EU govt solely information the actions of its prime 300 officers, and MEPs solely need to report their conferences if they’re the rapporteur or chair of the file in query. Political advisers and parliamentary assistants are excluded from the info.
The work of MEPs, elected by EU residents, can be being hampered by Amazon, a few of them warn.
The parliament’s employment and social affairs committee had deliberate to go to Amazon’s warehouses in Germany and Poland subsequent month (18-20 December), following calls to analyze anti-union repression and poor working situations.
However the firm has refused to open the doorways to MEPs for a second time.
Left MEP Leïla Chaibi, who was coordinating the mission, mentioned: “Simply since you’re wealthy does not imply you are above the regulation, above establishments and above staff.”
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