Amazon’s Black Friday Worker Protest tradition continues for fifth year

• Amazon workers in more than 20 countries are to protest between Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday.
• This is the fifth year Amazon workers have protested during the big shopping weekend.
• The company has played down the actions, while they have individually taken some steps to address workers’ demands.

Workers in more than 20 countries, including the United States, are set to protest or strike between Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday over wages, working conditions and Amazon’s environmental impact.

The protests are part of the fifth annual Make Amazon Pay campaign, organized by a coalition of labor and progressive organizations.

In New Delhi, where employees said Amazon kept them going during a heat wave this spring, workers plan to march on parliament demanding higher wages and job protection. Workers in several German warehouses are set to walk off the job.

In New York City, workers associated with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union march on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ penthouse.

Have the protests worked?

Yes and no.

Amazon has downplayed the protests, characterizing them as small-scale and saying the labor groups organizing Make Amazon Pay present a misleadingly negative portrait of work at the company.

“The fact is, at Amazon, we provide great pay, great benefits and great opportunities — all from day one,” spokeswoman Eileen Hards said in a statement. “We’ve created more than 1.5 million jobs around the world and counting, and we offer a modern, safe and engaging workplace, whether you work in an office or in one of our operational buildings.”

Separately, it has also taken steps responding to some of the protesters’ demands, although not all workers say they are happy with the company’s progress.

As work groups make inroads into Amazon’s U.S. fulfillment network, the company has raised wages and broadcast its commitment to safety.

Over the past year, the Teamsters Union has scored several organizing victories at Amazon’s US logistics operations. The Amazon Labor Union, which represents about 5,500 workers at a Staten Island warehouse, voted in June to join the Teamsters. Delivery drivers and air hub operators in California, Kentucky and Atlanta also joined the Teamsters.

In September, Amazon raised wages for warehouse and shipping workers to an average of $22 an hour. In a post on its website, the company did not cite labor activism as a reason for the wage increases, saying they were “part of an annual process where we review our wages and benefits to ensure they remain competitive.”

What about Amazon’s climate footprint?

This summer, Amazon also announced that it had met an ambitious climate goal to “match” the electricity consumed by its global operations with renewable energy, while reducing its carbon footprint by 3% compared to the previous year.

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The company said it reached that goal seven years earlier than it expected, in part by becoming the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world.

Members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an organizing group of largely corporate workers, said the company’s calculations did not include emissions from third-party merchants, which account for more than half of sales on Amazon’s online store. Amazon has disputed the group’s findings.

Amazon focused on “all the low-hanging fruit projects that it could. But now they’re all done, and what we’re seeing is that they’re not doing the hard things,” Eliza Pan, a former Amazon employee and climate group member, told The Seattle Times in July.

Hards, the Amazon spokesman, said Amazon is not done reducing its carbon footprint.

“Some actions will have immediate carbon savings, while others will take years to show results – and we will continue to invest in both proven and new science-backed solutions to help address this crisis,” Hards said.

What do the protests mean for Black Friday shopping?

Significant delays have not occurred as a result of Make Amazon Pay protests in previous years, and they seem unlikely to affect shipping times this year.

The holiday season is a major revenue driver for the online retail giant. Amazon charted “record-breaking” holiday sales in the final three months of 2023, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on an earnings call earlier this year. The company reported $170 billion in revenue that quarter, a 14% increase over the previous year.