Amazon Workers Strike over Working Conditions on Black Friday

Seattle, WA (WorkersCompensation.com) - Amazon workers in 40 countries chose the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, to protest working conditions and demand higher wages from the retail giant.

Organized under "Make Amazon Pay," the international campaign was a concerted effort of 70 trade unions and organizations including Greenpeace, Oxfam and Amazon Workers International. According to the organization's website, the strike demands that Amazon increase worker pay, stop union busting activities at Amazon warehouses, improve its environmental impact, and improve worker safety conditions. 

Thousands of Amazon workers across 40 countries on five continents protested through walkouts and strikes on Black Friday.

“For workers and consumers, the price of everything is going up,” the campaign website says. “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.” 

Globally, the campaign calls for Amazon to pay its share of global income taxes. In individual countries, the focus of the strikes vary. 

In the U.S., workers protested in front of Jeff Bezos' apartment building in Manhattan, as well as in front of Whole Foods locations, and in front of Amazon fulfillment centers. 

Warehouse workers in the U.S. have long been concerned about the safety of Amazon warehouses. Employees have reported physical injuries due to the pace of work in warehouses, as well as mental health complaints from the pressures to meet output quotas. Data from workplace inspections shows that demands placed on employees can negatively impact their health. 

Data collected by the Washington state workers' compensation system found a "direct connection" between Amazon's pace of work and its high injury rate. In A May 2021 inspection, the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries Division of Safety and Health cited Amazon for a hazardous workplace. 

"The employer did not provide employees with a workplace free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause serious injury. Upon inspection, it was observed that employees at Amazon's BFI3 warehouse in Dupont, Washington are required to perform manual material handling tasks involving ergonomic risk factors including repetitive motions, lifting, carrying, pulling, pushing, forceful exertions, twisting, bending, long reaches, awkward postures, and combinations thereof, which have caused, and are likely to continue to cause musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs)," the citation said. "Employees are repeatedly lifting loads up to 49 pounds by hand, to and from locations that require bending, stooping, and reaching, without the assistance of material handling equipment. This is a high frequency exposure over short durations of time.

They also frequently need to reach above shoulder level and below knee level to stow and pick items from Kiva Shelves and use highly repetitive motions and forceful exertions to unpack incoming items and pack outgoing items."

The department fined the company $7,000. In October 2022, Amazon reported total sales of $127.10 billion in just the third quarter of the year.

A 2020 report by Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting found that across the country Amazon warehouse workers were twice as likely to get seriously hurt as workers in other warehouses. In that report, it was revealed Amazon fulfillment centers recorded 14,000 serious injuries requiring days off or job restrictions in 2019, an overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees. That rate was 33 percent higher at the company than it was the previous year, and nearly double the industry standard of four per 100 employees. 

Reveal's report found that Amazon's highest injury days were during Amazon Prime Week and on Cyber Monday - the Monday after Black Friday. 

Amazon's injury rates have also led to federal workplace safety investigations in Amazon warehouses in five states. 

In other countries, like France and Germany, workers walked out in protest of computerized productivity monitoring and target-setting that increases demand on their output. Workers in the United Kingdom focused their protests on higher pay in light of global inflation. 

According to Bloomberg News, the company acknowledged in a statement the campaign's concerns, but pushed back on the characterization that it wasn't working to make warehouses safer, citing its "competitive wages and great benefits" as well as efforts to make the company greenhouse gas neutral by 2040.

Share This Article: