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Amazon Concedes $15 Floor Wage, Bernie Sanders Plays Minor Role In Significant Victory

October 6, 2018 Bruce A. Dixon, Blackagendareport.com , , , ,
Amazon’s announcement last week that it would boost the wages of its lowest paid workers to $15 an hour in time for this year’s holiday rush, was not a generous gift from its owner Jeff Bezos, reportedly the wealthiest man on earth. It was also not, as some would like us to believe, a miracle wrought by the intervention of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. It was a strategic concession on the part of Amazon in the face of its own public relations needs, competitive pressures from its near-peers, pressure from transnational cooperation among its unionized European workforce, and to a minor degree the STOP BEZOS bill introduced by Sanders which proposes to tax large corporations for the amount their employees use in federal aid programs.

One Man Could End World Hunger, But He Won’t

October 4, 2018 Lee Camp, Truthdig.com , , ,
He’s achieved a net worth of more than $150 billion by selling everything that has ever existed … with free shipping. (It turns out the only thing stopping the human race from giving all our money to one man was that pesky $4.99 shipping fee.) But let me stop right here. Even the way we talk about economics is influenced by a capitalist culture that tells us amassing money is the answer to everything. Did you notice I said Bezos “achieved” a net worth of $150 billion, and that seems like a normal way to phrase it? However, would you say, “Jeffrey Dahmer achieved eating the hearts of 10 different people?” No, that would sound odd to you. Yet having $150 billion is nearly as sociopathic, and still we use terminology as if it’s GREAT!

Nicola Sturgeon Tells Amazon To Ditch Slave Wages Or Lose Millions In Handouts Freeze

September 22, 2018 By John Ferguson, Dailyrecord.co.uk , , , ,
The First Minister has lost patience with the web giants after their failure to bring in fair working standards and pay staff the Living Wage. Nicola Sturgeon has pulled the plug on multi-million pound grants for Amazon until they pay Scottish workers the Living Wage. The Sunday Mail can reveal the First Minister has introduced new criteria for state handouts that will exclude low-wage employers. She appears to have lost patience with Amazon – owned by the world’s richest man Jeff Bezos – after he consistently refused to pay workers the £8.75 an hour rate recommended by the Living Wage Foundation to guarantee basic living standards for staff. Scottish Government ministers have met with senior managers on a number of occasions, but failed to convince them to adopt the standard at plants in Dunfermline, Fife, and Gourock, Inverclyde.

Groups Backed By Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon Push For Return Of Net Neutrality Rules

August 29, 2018 By Roger Cheng, Cnet.com     , , , ,
On Monday, the Internet Association, Entertainment Software Association, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Writers Guild of America filed a brief with a US Appeals Court in support of Mozilla's lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission to bring back the rules governing an open internet. The groups represent power players such as Google parent Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon. "It's indisputable that net neutrality protections help consumers, promote innovation, and foster competition online," said IA President and CEO Michael Beckerman in a statement.  This comes a week after attorneys general of 22 states and the District of Columbia filed a brief urging the same court to reverse the FCC rollback, according to CBS News.

How European Workers Coordinated This Month’s Massive Amazon Strike—And What Comes Next

July 30, 2018 Rebecca Burns, Inthesetimes.com , , , , ,
As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ net worth topped $150 billion last week, making him the richest man in modern history, thousands of Amazon workers across Europe went on strike. The work stoppage, which lasted three days at some facilities, was one of the largest labor actions against Amazon to date, and the first to receive widespread coverage in the U.S. media. But the strikes and protests in Spain, Germany and Poland were just the latest in an escalating series of actions against Amazon in Europe, where workers belonging to both conventional unions and militant workers’ organizations are forging a transnational movement against the internet juggernaut. In Germany, which is Amazon's second-biggest market after the United States, workers at the company’s fulfillment centers waged the first-ever strike against Amazon in 2013.

Amazon’s Facial “Rekognition” Mismatches 28 Lawmakers With Criminals

July 28, 2018 By Aaron Kesel, Activistpost.com , ,
The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California tested Amazon’s facial Rekognition software and the program erroneously and hilariously identified 28 members of Congress as people who have been arrested for crimes. According to Jake Snow, an ACLU attorney, the ACLU downloaded 25,000 mugshots from a “public source.” The ACLU then ran the official photos of all 535 members of Congress through Rekognition, asking it to match them up with any of the mugshots—and it ended up mix-matching 28 members to mug shots. Ooops! Out of those 28, the ACLU’s test flagged six members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia.) Facial recognition historically has resulted in more false positives for African-Americans.

Nader Open Letter To Jeff Bezos

June 22, 2018 Staff, Nader.org , , ,
You’ve come a long way from being a restless electrical engineering and computer science dual major at our alma mater, Princeton University. By heeding your own advice, your own hunches and visions, you’ve become the world’s richest person – at $141 billion and counting.  You must feel you are on top of the world. You are crushing your competition—those little stores on Main Street, USA, and other large companies that are still in business. Your early clever minimizing of sales taxes gave you a big unfair advantage over brick and mortar stores that have had to pay 6, 7, 8 percent in sales taxes. Your tax-lawyers  and accountants are using the anarchic global tax avoidance jurisdictions to drive your company’s tax burden to zero on a $5.6 billion profit in 2017, plus receiving about $789 million from Trump’s tax giveaway law, according to The American Conservative magazine (see Daniel Kishi’s article, “Crony Capitalism Writ Large,” in the May/June 2018 edition).

Amazon Should Follow Google’s Lead And Stop Selling Face Surveillance Tech To Cops

June 4, 2018 Iqra Asghar and Kade Crockford, Privacysos.org , , ,
In response to internal and external protest and expressions of revulsion, Google yesterday announcedit would stop contracting with the Department of Defense to provide artificial intelligence technology to the US military. Google’s move is a rare instance in which one of the Big Five artificial intelligence firms in the United States takes an action to undercut its own profits in service of its professed ethical commitments. Other companies, including Amazon, must follow suit, and stop selling technology to human rights violators, including police departments. Last month, the ACLU and a coalition of over forty civil rights, civil liberties, religious, and community groups sent a public letter to Amazon demanding that the company stop selling its face surveillance software to law enforcement and other government agencies.

Amazon Bows To The Unions: New Shifts And Higher Wages

May 25, 2018 By Antonio Sciotto, Global.ilmanifesto.it , , ,
For the first time in Europe, the e-commerce multinational Amazon signed a contract with the unions regarding the organization of work shifts. This “historic” event—as FILCAMS CGIL, CISL and FISASCAT UILTUCS have called it—took place at the large shipment hub of Castel San Giovanni (Piacenza region), where, on Black Friday last year, employees were involved in a large-scale and unprecedented protest. The workers for the US giant, hired legally under the national contract for the logistics field, have complained they were being heavily tested by the tough shifts and the amount of tasks and the pace required by the e-commerce chain.

Amazon Workers Booed Jeff Bezos In Berlin

April 26, 2018 Jill Petzinger, Qz.com , , ,
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos received a hostile reception when he arrived in the German capital to pick up an innovation award on Tuesday (Apr. 24). Trade union Verdi confirmed that “several hundred Amazon workers,” who are members of the powerful union, amassed outside the offices of publisher Axel Springer, where the awards ceremony was taking place, carrying placards reading “Make Amazon Pay.” Amazon workers from other countries, including Poland and Italy, also traveled to Berlin to join the demonstration. Verdi boss Frank Bsirske said: “We have a boss who wants to impose American working conditions on the world and take us back to the 19th century.” Verdi has for years been a constant thorn in Amazon’s side in Germany, organizing workers strikes to demand improved pay and working conditions.

Indigenous Women Unite To Defend The Amazon, Mother Earth And Climate Justice

March 20, 2018 By Leila Salazar-Lopez, Amazonwatch.org , , , ,
It was the first time ever that indigenous Amazonian women from seven nationalities, including the Kichwa, Sápara, Shiwiar, Shuar, Achuar, Andoa, and Waorani, joined forces and marched together in defense of their rights, rainforests and future generations. They came from remote rainforest communities, local towns and provinces by foot, canoe, bus and plane to denounce a newly signed oil contract between the Ecuadorian government and Chinese oil corporation Andes Petroleum for blocks 79 and 83, which includes parts of the indigenous territories of the Sápara, Shiwiar and the Kichwa of Sarayaku, Pacayaku, Teresamama along the Bobonaza and Curaray River Basins. Contrary to Ecuadorian and international laws, they were not consulted and did not give their consent for any oil operations on their territories and have vowed to defend their rainforest homes and cultures.

Amazon Is A 21st-Century Digital Chain Gang

February 9, 2018 By Marshall Auerback / AlterNet.org , ,
When Amazon announced plans to locate a $5 billion, 50,000-employee complex as its second headquarters somewhere in North America, state governments and municipalities fell over themselves offering billions of dollars in tax abatements and corporate subsidies to secure the prize. It might behoove the remaining 20 cities that have made the final cut to heed the warning from Virgil’s Aeneid: “I fear the Greeks, even when they are bearing gifts.” Especially when the gifts come in the form of a modern-day digital chain gang. Amazon likes to see itself as a cutting-edge, 21st-century growth company, always working to expedite delivery to its customers, whether by means of a drone, or eliminating queueing and bagging at its newly acquired Whole Foods stores with a new smartphone app.

Amazon Is A 21st-Century Digital Chain Gang

January 29, 2018 By Marshall Auerback, AlterNet.org , ,
When Amazon announced plans to locate a $5 billion, 50,000-employee complex as its second headquarters somewhere in North America, state governments and municipalities fell over themselves offering billions of dollars in tax abatements and corporate subsidies to secure the prize. It might behoove the remaining 20 cities that have made the final cut to heed the warning from Virgil’s Aeneid: “I fear the Greeks, even when they are bearing gifts.” Especially when the gifts come in the form of a modern-day digital chain gang. Amazon likes to see itself as a cutting-edge, 21st-century growth company, always working to expedite delivery to its customers, whether by means of a drone, or eliminating queueing and bagging at its newly acquired Whole Foods stores with a new smartphone app.

Only 4 Out Of 20 #AmazonHQ2 Finalists Have Released Bids

January 20, 2018 By Beryl Lipton, Muckrock.com , , ,
The retail company has knocked out 90% of the competing cities - here’s the finalists that released their bids, and the ones that are still holding out. The growing global retailer Amazon has announced the 20 finalists for its challenge to secure homefield rights to its second headquarters. Los Angeles is the only contender left from the West Coast, where Amazon’s current Seattle operations are based; the other cities from that side of the Mississippi to make the cut are Denver, Dallas, and Austin. The other three-quarters of final round qualifiers are Eastern U.S. areas well-known to corporate establishments, places like Boston, Columbus, Raleigh, and Atlanta. Toronto makes the list as the sole non-U.S. locale under consideration.

Freedom Rider: Oligarch Jeff Bezos

January 20, 2018 By Margaret Kimberley, Blackagendareport.com , , , ,
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $105 billion and is the richest man in the world. But he is not just the richest man at this moment in history. He is the richest person who has ever lived. As of 2017 he and seven other billionaires had a collective net worth equal to that of the poorest 3.6 billion people on earth. These figures have been in the news of late but without much useful analysis. The corporate media refuse to state what is obvious. Namely that inequality is worse around the world precisely because these super rich people demand it. While pundits and politicians go on breathlessly about oligarchs in Russia, they seldom take a look at the wealthiest in their own back yard and the control they exert over the lives of millions of people.
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