Amazon slams critics as tax and working practices criticism intensifies
Amazon’s social media team have gone after some of the e-commerce giant’s biggest critics in US political circles: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Mark Pocan.
Late last week, Warren tweeted: “Giant corporations like Amazon report huge profits to their shareholders – but they exploit loopholes and tax havens to pay close to nothing in taxes.”
“That’s just not right – and it’s why I’ll be introducing a bill to make the most profitable companies pay a fair share.”
To which Amazon’s social media peeps responded: “You make the tax laws @SenWarren; we just follow them. If you don’t like the laws you’ve created, by all means, change them.”
Their employer, they added, has paid billions of dollars in corporate taxes over the past few years alone.
And there was more…
Meanwhile, on the day that Sanders met with Amazon workers in Alabama, Amazon News tweeted that his home state of Vermont’s minimum wage was $11.75, whilst Amazon’s was $15. “Sanders would rather talk in Alabama than act in Vermont,” it stated.
And it was back in action when Pocan flagged allegations of drivers peeing in bottles and defecating en route to destinations due to pressure to meet quotas.
Marco Rubio
Earlier this month, Republican senator Marco Rubio backed workers seeking to form the first Amazon union in the US.
The Florida senator, who recently voted against raising the federal minimum wage, slammed Amazon for “waging a war against working class values” in an article published in USA Today.
Almost 6,000 workers at an Amazon fulfilment centre in Bessemer, Alabama, began voting by postal ballot last month on whether to unionise, and have until the end of March to make their decision. A majority of the employees have to vote “yes" in order to unionise.
Amazon is the second largest nongovernmental employer in the US and has a history of clamping down on unionising efforts at its warehouses and Whole Foods stores.
Rubio said: “When the conflict is between working Americans and a company whose leadership has decided to wage culture war against working class values, the choice is easy. I support the workers.”
“And that’s why I stand with those at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse today.”
He added: “Uniquely malicious corporate behaviour like Amazon’s justifies a more adversarial approach to labour relations.”
“It is no fault of Amazon’s workers if they feel the only option available to protect themselves against bad faith is to form a union.”
“Today it might be workplace conditions, but tomorrow it might be a requirement that the workers embrace management’s latest “woke” human resources fad.”
Rubio also accused Amazon of “using anticompetitive strategies to crush small businesses, bans conservative books and blocks traditional charities from participating in its AmazonSmile programme. Not surprisingly, it has also bowed to China's censorship demands.”
He concluded by arguing that workers were right to suspect management of not having their best interests in mind.
“Wealthy woke CEOs instead view them as a cog in a machine that consistently prioritises global profit margins and stoking cheap culture wars. The company’s workers deserve better.”
Sign up for our free retail technology newsletter here.
Continue reading…