ST. LOUIS (ABC News) — On Black Friday, workers at Amazon in St. Peters joined other workers around the nation and the world who walked off the job to demand better pay and working conditions.
More than 30 different countries’ trade unions and environmentalists have both called for protests to be held against Amazon.
A speaker for the union has stated that they are doing a campaign to bring awareness to the stress that employees experience during the holiday season.
Amazon has stated that it did not anticipate this would have any impact on its customers.
The strike was organized under “Make Amazon Pay,” an international campaign coordinated among trade unions, climate justice groups, and labor rights organizations. It calls upon Amazon to increase worker pay and stop busting warehouse employees’ efforts to unionize, as well as improve its environmental impact. Friday’s actions include walkouts, strikes, and forms of protest from thousands of Amazon warehouse workers across 40 countries and five continents on Black Friday, the unofficial kick off of the holiday shopping season.
“For workers and consumers, the price of everything is going up,” the campaign website states. “And for everyone, the global temperature is rising and our planet is under stress. But instead of supporting its workers, communities and the planet, Amazon is squeezing every last drop it can.” The campaign calls upon Amazon to pay its share of global income taxes, which it did not pay in Europe in 2021 and has never paid in the United States — even as its received many additional tax credits from governments as it built its network of warehouses.
The focus and tactics of each strike varies by region. Warehouse workers in France and Germany, for example, walked out in protest of computerized productivity monitoring and target-setting that places a high demand on their output. Workers in the United Kingdom are focused on raising their pay in light of global inflation that has hit their country particularly hard.