Amazon workers plan global Black Friday protests for better wages, tax accountability

Amazon employees worldwide are readying to onslaught connected 1 of the busiest buying days of the year.

Make Amazon Pay, a conjugation of workers and activists, is organizing Black Friday protests to request the retail elephantine rise wages, wage much taxes and trim its carbon footprint, according to its website. The strikes are acceptable to instrumentality spot astatine factories, warehouses, data centers, firm offices and oil refineries crossed the world, including sites successful Minnesota, California, Boston and New York City.

Make Amazon Pay published a database of 25 demands connected its website that see raising wages and extending paid sick leave, offering unions entree to Amazon worksites, committing to zero emissions by 2030 and paying taxes successful afloat by "ending taxation maltreatment done nett shifting, loopholes and the usage of taxation havens, and providing afloat taxation transparency."

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said successful an emailed connection that portion the institution is "not cleanable successful immoderate area," the institution takes its relation and interaction "very seriously."

Nantel pointed to the company's pledge to deed nett zero c by 2040; its "competitive wages and large benefits" with mean starting wages astatine much than $18 per hour, depending connected location; and the company's $1.7 cardinal national income taxation disbursal reported successful 2020. The spokesperson added that Amazon is "inventing caller ways" to support employees harmless and healthy.

Nantel did not accidental however the protests would impact vacation shoppers.

The trillion-dollar institution and its founder, billionaire Jeff Bezos, person precocious travel nether occurrence for a myriad of issues. The institution faces a fig of antitrust investigations from a fig of entities, including regulators successful the U.S., Canada and the European Union, and is often accused of overworking its employees portion offering inadequate wages. President Joe Biden and others person besides criticized the magnitude of taxes the company pays.

Bezos acknowledged successful an April missive to shareholders that Amazon needs "to bash a amended occupation for our employees."

Despite the pushback, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has helped Bezos go the archetypal idiosyncratic successful past with a nett worthy surpassing $200 billion.

"The pandemic has exposed however Amazon places profits up of workers, society, and our planet," Make Amazon Pay said successful a statement. "Amazon takes excessively overmuch and gives backmost excessively little."

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