Amazon
Profile
Amazon is a retail behemoth whose real business is data – Big Data. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, the company relentlessly gathers data every time an individual uses its website or its voice assistant in order to be able to sell more stuff. It is infamous for its use of low paid warehouse workers and delivery drivers who are tasked with delivering a wide variety of products to online shoppers. The company has spent millions to prevent these workers from organizing but in a historic first, workers at Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, voted to unionize in April 2022.
Online shopping, data hosting, supermarkets, Alexa voice assistant, Kindle e-book reader
Violations
TOP 5 OFFENSE GROUPS (GROUPS DEFINED) | PENALTY TOTAL | NUMBER OF RECORDS |
---|---|---|
consumer-protection-related offenses | $131,644,728 | 17 |
employment-related offenses | $88,246,498 | 15 |
environment-related offenses | $16,635,907 | 22 |
safety-related offenses | $4,158,989 | 102 |
competition-related offenses | $2,250,000 | 1 |
(January 29, 2024)
Stories
Activism
New wave of Black Friday “Make Amazon Pay” strikes and protests in 30+ countries
Skwawkbox | November 23, 2023
The global day of action is taking place for the four Black Friday in a row. In previous years, thousands of workers went on strike at facilities throughout Germany, France, Spain, the UK and Italy; garment workers’ took to the streets in Bangladesh; US workers organised walkouts; civil society allies held demonstrations projecting the Make Amazon Pay logo at Amazon headquarters all over the world and projecting “pandemic profiteer” onto Jeff Bezos’s mansion; and climate activists blockaded Amazon warehouses in three European countries.
USA: Google And Amazon Workers Protest Their Companies’ $1.2 Billion AI Contract With Israel
Richard Nieva | Forbes | September 12, 2022
Hundreds of Google and Amazon workers on Thursday staged protests around the country to speak out against the two tech giants’ cloud contracts with the Israeli government, fearing the military could use the technology to surveil Palestinians.
USA: ‘The revolution is here’: Chris Smalls’ union win sparks a movement at other Amazon warehouses
Gloria Oladipo | The Guardian | April 6, 2022
Staff at more than 50 Amazon warehouses have contacted the organizers of last week’s historic vote establishing Amazon’s first-ever union, expressing interest in setting up unions of their own.
Amazon Will Face Black Friday Strikes and Protests in 20 Countries
Lauren Kaori Gurley | VICE | November 18, 2021
On Black Friday, a group of unions and grassroots organizations, known as the Make Amazon Pay Coalition, will stage coordinated protests and strikes in at least 20 countries to demand Amazon pay workers a living wage, respect their right to join unions, pay its fair share of taxes, and commit to meaningful environmental sustainability.
USA: The Teamsters File for First Union Election at an Amazon Warehouse in Canada
Lauren Kaori Gurley | VICE | September 14, 2021
A vote at YEG1, the Amazon warehouse in Alberta, where workers have described rampant favoritism and discrimination against ethnic minorities and immigrants, could be held as soon as in two weeks, once the Alberta Labour Relations Board approves the election.
Amazon workers strike in Italy over pandemic-driven delivery demands
Elvira Pollina | Reuters | March 22, 2021
Italy's FILT-CGIL, FIT-CISL and Uiltrasporti unions called the 24-hour strike after failing to reach common ground at two meetings in January with Amazon and the collapse of negotiations with employers association Assoespressi, which represents delivery firms.
EthicalConsumer calls for boycott of Amazon over company's tax avoidance
Ethical Consumer | January 29, 2021
In 2020, Amazon announced that its key UK business paid just £14.46 million in tax in 2019 - a 3% increase from the previous year, despite pre-tax profits growing by more than 35%. We have estimated that in 2017 Amazon’s tax avoidance from profit shifting alone cost the UK £52million.
More than 400 lawmakers from 34 countries back 'Make Amazon Pay' campaign
Paul Sandle | Reuters | December 3, 2020
More than 400 lawmakers from 34 countries have signed a letter to Amazon.com Inc boss Jeff Bezos backing a campaign that claims the tech giant has “dodged and dismissed … debts to workers, societies, and the planet,” organisers said.
US book stores launch 'Boxed Out' campaign against Amazon
Techxplore | October 15, 2020
The American Booksellers Association has launched an advertising campaign against Amazon to alert the public to what it calls the growing danger that book stores are under from the online goliath during the coronavirus pandemic.
Anti-Amazon campaigners in France team up to say 'non' to firm's expansion
Christian Lowe, Elizabeth Pineau and Mathieu Rosemain | Reuters | July 30, 2020
In France, disparate anti-Amazon forces – including local activists, environmentalists, trade unions and members of parliament - are coming together to battle the world’s largest online retailer. In some instances, they have received funding from some of the world’s wealthiest philanthropists. The aim: to stop the e-commerce giant from expanding its presence arguing the U.S.-based company destroys retail jobs, exploits workers and harms the environment – arguments Amazon rejects.
USA: Activists Build a Grass-Roots Alliance Against Amazon
David Streitfield | The New York Times | November 26, 2019
The coalition, Athena, comprises three dozen grass-roots groups involved in issues like digital surveillance, antitrust and working conditions in warehouses. The goal is to encourage and unify the resistance to Amazon that is now beginning to form.
Amazon workers strike in Germany, joining action in Spain and Poland
Reuters | July 16, 2018
Thousands of workers will walk off the job on Tuesday at Amazon warehouses in Germany to demand better working conditions, joining colleagues in Spain and Poland in taking action that coincides with a major sales promotion.
International:
USA:
- Action Center on Race & the Economy (ACRE)
- Advance Democracy, Inc. (ADI)
- Amazon Employees for Climate Justice
- Amazon Labor Union (ALU)
- Athena
- Economic Roundtable
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Fair Tax Mark
- Humane Tech
- Mijente
- Oceana
- Pacific Environment
- Social Justice Books
- Stand.earth
- Strategic Organizing Center (SOC)
- Tech Inquiry
UK:
Italy:
- Italian Federation of Transport Workers (FILT-CGIL)
- Italian Transport Federation (FIT-CISL)
- Uiltrasporti Union
Other:
- Greenpeace Poland - Poland
- Netherlands Data Protection Foundation (SDBN) - The Netherlands
- Unified Service Sector Union (ver.di) - Germany
& Lawsuits
USA: Amazon sued by three employees who allege gender discrimination and ‘chronic’ pay inequity
Annie Palmer | CNBC | November 20, 2023
Caroline Wilmuth, Katherine Schomer and Erin Combs, who work in various roles within Amazon’s corporate research and strategy division, alleged the company assigns female staffers lower job titles for the same roles that are held by men with higher titles and larger salaries.
Dutch Consumer Group Sues Amazon Over Data Tracking
Catherine Stupp | Wall Street Journal | October 18, 2023
Consumer-rights body SDBN has filed a lawsuit against the tech company that mirrors a previous penalty, this time aiming to win damages for consumers.
Spanish court: Amazon violated labor law with delivery app
Jennifer O'Mahogany | AP News | February 3, 2023
A Spanish court has ruled that Amazon broke labor laws by forcing more than 2,000 delivery drivers to use an app that the company controlled for scheduling work and payments and requiring them to use their own cars and cellphones on the job.
USA: OSHA Fines Amazon 'Roughly 0.000013%' of Annual Revenue for Worker Safety Hazards
Julia Conley | Common Dreams | January 19, 2023
A paltry $60,000 fine for failing to keep employees safe at one of the world's richest companies offered the latest evidence, according to one critic, that the system ostensibly meant to protect workers "is so broken."
UK: Amazon facing £900m lawsuit for ‘pushing customers to pay more’
Alex Hern | The Guardian | October 20, 2022
A £900m class action claim against Amazon accuses the company of pushing customers towards “offers” that benefit the online retailer, but are not good deals for users.
USA: Amazon loses effort to overturn historic union election at Staten Island warehouse
Annie Palmer | CNBC | September 1, 2022
A historic union victory at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse should be upheld, a National Labor Relations Board official recommended on Thursday. In April, more than 2,600 workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Staten Island, known as JFK8, voted to join the Amazon Labor Union, becoming the first group to vote in favor of unionizing at one of the e-commerce giant’s U.S. facilities.
Exclusive: Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon used illegal gold from Brazilian Indigenous lands
Daniel Camargos | Repórter Brasil | July 25, 2022
We reveal how illegal gold leaves the Amazon and ends up in your cell phone or computer. Two refiners, the Italian company Chimet and the Brazilian company Marsam, whose production was contaminated by metal extracted from clandestine mines, sold gold to the four biggest tech giants.
USA: Amazon Co-owns Deportation Airline Implicated in Alleged Tortute of Immigrants
Sam Biddle | The Intercept | February 17, 2022
To further expand its ballooning logistics empire, the company quietly became a partial owner of Air Transport Services Group Inc., a power player in the air cargo industry that has helped the United States forcibly deport thousands of migrants and, its passengers allege, at times subjected them to horrific abuse en route.
Italy fines Amazon $1.3 billion for abusing its market position
Romain Dillet | Tech Crunch | December 9, 2021
Italy’s competition authority announced that it had fined Amazon €1.129 billion, or roughly $1.3 billion at today’s exchange rate. According to the antitrust watchdog, Amazon has abused its dominant market position and pushed third-party sellers to use the company’s logistics service Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).
India: Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands, documents show
Aditya Kalra & Steve Stecklow | Reuters | October 13, 2021
A trove of internal Amazon documents reveals how the e-commerce giant ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoff goods and manipulating search results to boost its own product lines in India - practices it has denied engaging in. And at least two top Amazon executives reviewed the strategy.
USA: A group of 42,000 Amazon workers is getting $8.6 million after they weren't paid for mandatory bag searches
Hannah Towey | Business Insider | July 27, 2021
Amazon and its staffing partner will pay a total of $13.5 million in the settlement, ending a legal battle that has lasted over 10 years, Bloomberg Law reported on Monday. The highest payout claimed by an Amazon employee thus far is $5,760.
USA: Amazon To Pay $61.7 Million to Settle FTC Charges It Withheld Some Customer Tips from Amazon Flex Drivers
Federal Trade Commission | February 3, 2021
Amazon will pay more than $61.7 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it failed to pay Amazon Flex drivers the full amount of tips they received from Amazon customers over a two and a half year period. The FTC’s complaint alleges that the company stopped its behavior only after becoming aware of the FTC’s investigation in 2019.
Environmental Impacts
USA: Amazon workers press company on climate change response after Pakistan floods
Eli M. Rosenberg | NBC News | January 10, 2023
The petition was started by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group of workers that has pushed the company on climate issues for years. Scientists have said the flooding that killed more than 1,700 people and displaced millions in Pakistan was much more likely to occur because of climate change.
Private Report Shows How Amazon Drastically Undercounts Its Carbon Footprint
Will Evans | Reveal News | February 25, 2022
Over the past two decades, under pressure from investors and activists, thousands of companies have agreed to disclose their carbon footprints to a nonprofit organization named CDP (originally known as the Carbon Disclosure Project). Amazon had been shamed with an F grade for failing to disclose until this past year, when it submitted to CDP’s questionnaire for the first time. But unlike the majority of companies pressured by investors to disclose, Amazon asked that its report not be shared publicly.
Amazon’s plastic waste soars by a third during pandemic, Oceana report finds
Karen McVeigh | The Guardian | December 15, 2021
Amazon’s plastic packaging waste soared by almost a third, to 270,000 tonnes, during the pandemic last year, according to a report from marine conservation group Oceana.
USA: Amazon and Target play ‘outsized’ role in port congestion and pollution, report finds
Justine Calma | The Verge | November 29, 2021
Amazon and Target are playing a big role in the port pollution crisis along the US West Coast, according to a report published today. These retail giants are among the top importers in the US and rely heavily on shipping routes between China and California.
As Jeff Bezos stresses climate change, Amazon promotes books saying it's fake
Brian Contreras | Los Angeles Times | July 26, 2021
New research from the nonprofit investigative group Advance Democracy has revealed that Amazon.com’s main search function — the “Sort by: Featured” display option, which is the default way Amazon filters its enormous catalog of products when customers go looking for something — gives prominent real estate to books that downplay or outright deny the reality of climate change.
Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses every year, ITV News investigation finds
Richard Pallot | iTV | June 22, 2021
Undercover filming from inside Amazon's Dunfermline warehouse reveals the sheer scale of the waste: Smart TVs, laptops, drones, hairdryers, top of the range headphones, computer drives, books galore, thousands of sealed face masks – all sorted into boxes marked “destroy”.
USA: Amazon workers demand company quit polluting near communities of color
Justine Calma & Zoe Schiffer | The Verge | May 25, 2021
More than 600 workers have signed a petition asking Amazon to bring its pollution down to zero by 2030.
USA: World's Richest Man Jeff Bezos Hides Backstage as Amazon Workers Demand 'Bold, Rapid' Climate Action
Jake Johnson | Common Dreams | May 23, 2019
Amazon CEO and world's richest man Jeff Bezos refused to emerge from backstage at his company's annual shareholder meeting in Seattle on Wednesday as a group of his employees demanded that the online retail giant use its immense power and resources to help confront the global climate crisis.
& Relations
Saudi Arabia: Migrants workers who toiled in Amazon warehouses were deceived and exploited
Amnesty International | October 10, 2023
In many cases, it is highly likely that the abuses suffered by workers amounted to human trafficking, given the deception that occurred during their recruitment, and the exploitation endured once they were there.
USA: Amazon fires two employees tied to Staten Island union effort
Annie Palmer | CNBC | May 9, 2022
Mat Cusick and Tristan Dutchin told CNBC they were fired by Amazon in recent days. Both Cusick and Dutchin have been working with the Amazon Labor Union, an upstart group led by current and former company employees, to organize workers at the e-commerce giant’s warehouses on New York’s Staten Island.
USA: Working at an Amazon Warehouse Got Even More Dangerous in 2021
Aaron Gordon | VICE | April 12, 2022
More Amazon warehouse workers are getting seriously injured on the job than a year before and at twice the rate of non-Amazon warehouses, despite the company’s pledge to make Amazon “Earth’s Safest Place to Work,” according to a recent analysis of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) data by the Strategic Organizing Center.
USA: Leaked: New Amazon Worker Chat App Would Ban Words Like "Union", "Restrooms", "Pay Rise", and "Plantation"
Ken Klippenstein | The Intercept | April 4, 2022
Amazon will block and flag employee posts on a planned internal messaging app that contain keywords pertaining to labor unions, according to internal company documents reviewed by The Intercept. An automatic word monitor would also block a variety of terms that could represent potential critiques of Amazon’s working conditions, like “slave labor,” “prison,” and “plantation,” as well as “restrooms” — presumably related to reports of Amazon employees relieving themselves in bottles to meet punishing quotas.
USA: Amazon delivery drivers have to consent to AI surveillance in their vans or lose their jobs
James Vincent | The Verge | May 24, 2021
This level of micro-management — and the potential for the AI systems to get it wrong — seems to have angered some drivers. One driver speaking to the Thomson Reuters Foundation earlier this month said the cameras were an “invasion of privacy.” “We are out here working all day, trying our best already,” the driver, 22-year-old Henry Search, told the publication. “The cameras are just another way to control us.”
USA: Amazon Drivers Are Instructed to Drive Recklessly to Meet Delivery Quotas
Lauren Kaori Gurley | VICE | May 6, 2021
Amazon delivery companies around the United States are encouraging reckless and dangerous driving by ordering delivery drivers to shut off an app called Mentor that Amazon uses to monitor drivers' speed and give them a safety score to prevent accidents. Drivers say they are being ordered to turn the app off by their bosses so that they can speed through their delivery routes in order to hit Amazon's delivery targets.
USA: 14-hour days and no bathroom breaks: Amazon's overworked delivery drivers
Michael Sainato | The Guardian | March 11, 2021
Drivers report being underpaid and having to urinate in bottles in their vehicles to keep up with delivery rates.
USA: Amazon Hired Koch-Backed Anti-Union Consultant to Fight Alabama Warehouse Organizing
Lee Fang | The Intercept | February 10, 2021
Amazon is bringing on a set of well-trained union suppression consultants in its high-profile fight to keep its massive warehouse workforce free of organized labor. The Seattle-based conglomerate recently retained a consultant named Russell Brown to help thwart the union election that began recently at its fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, new disclosuresOpens in a new tab show.
USA: Secret Amazon Reports Expose the Company’s Surveillance of Labor and Environmental Groups
Lauren Kaori Gurley | VICE | November 23, 2020
Dozens of leaked documents from Amazon’s Global Security Operations Center reveal the company’s reliance on Pinkerton operatives to spy on warehouse workers and the extensive monitoring of labor unions, environmental activists, and other social movements.
USA: 'Go back to work': outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor
Michael Sainato | The Guardian | October 18, 2019
In September, Billy Foister, a 48-year-old Amazon warehouse worker, died after a heart attack at work. According to his brother, an Amazon human resources representative informed him at the hospital that Billy had lain on the floor for 20 minutes before receiving treatment from Amazon’s internal safety responders.
Schoolchildren in China work overnight to produce Amazon Alexa devices
Gethin Chamberlain | The Guardian | August 8, 2019
Hundreds of schoolchildren have been drafted in to make Amazon’s Alexa devices in China as part of a controversial and often illegal attempt to meet production targets, documents seen by the Guardian reveal.
USA: Missing wages, grueling shifts, and bottles of urine: The disturbing accounts of Amazon delivery drivers may reveal the true human cost of 'free' shipping
Hayley Peterson | Business Insider | September 11, 2018
In interviews over the course of eight months, drivers described a variety of alleged abuses, including lack of overtime pay, missing wages, intimidation, and favoritism. Drivers also described a physically demanding work environment in which, under strict time constraints, they felt pressured to drive at dangerously high speeds, blow stop signs, and skip meal and bathroom breaks.
Financials
Click here for the latest list.
Political Influence
OpenSecrets.org Profile of Amazon.com
USA: How Amazon, Google and Facebook Helped Fund the Campaign to Overturn Roe
Sam Biddle | The Intercept | October 1, 2022
In the years leading up to the seismic reproductive rights decision, however, the tech giants sponsored a controversial group that’s worked tirelessly to put the Supreme Court under conservative control, setting the stage for Roe’s reversal.
The Amazon lobbyists who kill U.S. consumer privacy protections
Jeffrey Dastin, Chris Kirkham and Aditya Kalra | CNBC | November 19, 2021
Internal documents seen by Reuters reveal how a former aide to Joe Biden helped the tech giant build a lobbying juggernaut that has gutted legislation in two dozen states seeking to give consumers more control over their data.
USA: The secret behind Amazon’s domination in cloud computing
Daniel Lippman & Emily Birnbaum | Politico | April 6, 2021
Since 2018, Amazon Web Services has hired at least 66 former government officials with acquisition, procurement or technology adoption experience, most hired directly away from government posts and more than half of them from the Defense Department.
USA: Amazon Has Become a Prime Revolving-Door Destination in Washington
David Corn & Dan Spinelli | Mother Jones | March 2, 2021
A Mother Jones investigation has identified at least 247 US government officials and employees—with about 150 hailing from the intelligence, cybersecurity, law enforcement, and military fields—who were hired by Amazon in the past 10 years or so.
USA: Revealed: AmazonSmile helps fund anti-vaccine groups
Julia Carrie Wong | The Guardian | March 5, 2019
The AmazonSmile fundraising program – through which Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price of a shopper’s Amazon transactions to an organization of their choice – is promoted on the websites of four prominent anti-vaccine organizations: National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), Physicians for Informed Consent [see footnote], Learn the Risk, and Age of Autism.
& Evasion
Amazon had sales income of €44bn in Europe in 2020 but paid no corporation tax
Rupert Neate | The Guardian | May 4, 2021
Fresh questions have been raised over Amazon’s tax planning after its latest corporate filings in Luxembourg revealed that the company collected record sales income of €44bn (£38bn) in Europe last year but did not have to pay any corporation tax to the Grand Duchy.
Amazon Has Record-Breaking Profits in 2020, Avoids $2.3 Billion in Federal Income Taxes
Matthew Gardner | ITEP | February 3, 2021
Amazon’s winning streak in its battle against the U.S. tax system remains intact. This week the retail giant announced record-breaking sales and income for 2020, and an effective federal income tax rate of just 9.4 percent, less than half the statutory corporate tax of 21 percent.
New study deems Amazon worst for 'aggressive' tax avoidance
Rupert Neate | The Guardian | December 2, 2019
The big six US tech firms have been accused of “aggressively avoiding” $100bn (£75bn) of global tax over the past decade.
Amazon halved corporation tax bill despite UK profits tripling
Mark Sweeney | The Guardian | August 3, 2019
Amazon has revealed that its UK corporation tax bill almost halved to £4.5m last year, days after the US company posted a record profit of $2.5bn (£1.9bn) in its most recent quarter.
Amazon settles tax row with France, value undisclosed
Reuters | February 5, 2018
Amazon said on Monday it had settled a long-running dispute with French tax authorities, who have been seeking nearly 200 million euros ($249 million) from the online retail giant.
Revealed: how Project Goldcrest helped Amazon avoid huge sums in tax
Harry Davies & Simon Marks | The Guardian | February 18, 2016
Documents released during the internet giant’s court battle with the US Internal Revenue Service over a possible $1.5bn in unpaid taxes detail a complex restructuring and a deal with Luxembourg that delivered Amazon multimillion-dollar savings.
Amazon investigated by UK authorities over tax avoidance
Martin Hickman | The Independent | April 5, 2012
Tax officials have launched an investigation into whether the online retail giant Amazon has avoided tax by officially allocating its UK sales to a company based in Luxembourg.
USA: Amazon Abandons Warehouse Plan Because San Diego Is Considering Worker Protection Law
Lauren Kaori Gurley | VICE | October 12, 2021
Amazon backed out of a last-mile distribution center project near San Diego, California, because of a proposed law that would require it to pay workers more and offer them stronger protections, Motherboard has confirmed.
Amazon's Facial Analysis Program Is Building A Dystopic Future For Trans And Nonbinary People
Anna Merlan & Dhruv Mehrotra | Jezebel | June 27, 2019
A Jezebel investigation has found that Rekognition frequently misgenders trans, queer and nonbinary individuals. Furthermore, in a set of photos of explicitly nonbinary individuals Rekognition misgendered all of them—a mistake that’s baked into the program’s design, since it measures gender as a binary.
USA: Healthcare is a huge industry – no wonder Amazon is muscling in
John Naughton | The Guardian | February 4, 2018
The report below the line revealed that the online giant had teamed up with Warren Buffett’s conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, and America’s biggest bank to create a not-for-profit healthcare group whose mission is to reduce the healthcare costs for their combined payroll of nearly a million employees.
Procurement
USA: New records show Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have thousands of previously unreported military and law enforcement contracts
Aaron Holmes | Business Insider | July 8, 2020
The subcontracts were obtained through open records requests by accountability nonprofit Tech Inquiry. They show that tech giants including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have secured more than 5,000 agreements with agencies including the Department of Defense, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the FBI.
USA: The Details About the CIA's Deal With Amazon
Frank Konkel | The Atlantic | July 17, 2014
The intelligence community is about to get the equivalent of an adrenaline shot to the chest. This summer, a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community.