3 reasons to NOT shop with Amazon on Prime Day
Every year, Amazon’s Prime Day promises epic deals and more savings for consumers. But Prime Day comes with an even bigger cost than Amazon wants you to know. The more money we put into Amazon, the more it will continue to use our dollars to fund its collaborations with police and ICE and continue to mistreat its own workers.
Our dollars matter. Here’s 3 reasons why you should skip Amazon this Prime Day:
Reason 1: Amazon mistreats its workers.
Amazon is the second largest private employer in the U.S. (after Walmart). For years, its employees have been speaking out about the unsafe and strenuous conditions at company warehouses. COVID-19 shined an even brighter light on this issue. Since the beginning of the pandemic, warehouse workers have been raising concerns about the company not doing enough to protect them from getting sick, including not shutting down facilities with confirmed cases of COVID-19. After pressure from labor organizers and politicians, Amazon has finally confirmed that more than 19,000 workers got COVID-19.
Amazon expects employees to work long days, move fast, and hit impossible goals. If workers don’t hit these goals, they are at risk of losing their jobs. Amazon doesn’t care about its employees, it only cares about money.
Reason 2: Amazon works with enforcement agencies like the police and ICE.
As more and more people call for defunding the police, Amazon is doing everything it can to be law enforcement’s BFF. Amazon has more than 1,400 partnerships with police departments across the U.S. through Ring, its home surveillance camera network. Police push Ring products in their communities and, in return, Ring gives police departments an easy way to request footage from people who have Ring cameras. Police do not need a warrant to ask for footage. Ring’s accompanying app, Neighbors, transforms communities of people into digitally gated compounds. Ring encourages a culture that condones and promotes surveillance and turns community members into vigilantes.
Amazon also plays a critical role in Immigrant and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) inhumane deportation machine. Palatnir, a data mining company at the center of ICE’s operation, pays Amazon approximately $600,000 a month to use its servers. Palantir relies on Amazon’s web hosting platform to power the databases and “management” systems used to cruelly track, detain, and then deport immigrants.
Reason 3: Amazon has monopoly power and wants to get bigger — no matter what.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is set to become the world’s first trillionaire. It’s clear through Amazon’s workplace practices that Bezos’s money is not being used to create a better working environment or pay higher wages to workers for the labor that is leading to the company’s overall success. And he is directly profiting from partnerships with police and ICE that bring in hundreds of thousands dollars every month.
On top of that, Amazon has a bad habit of using data from independent sellers on Amazon to develop competing products. A U.S. House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee recently released a report that details how Amazon pretends to have friendly partnerships with other brands. However, behind closed doors it bullies sellers into agreeing to their financial terms by de-stocking products, making it difficult for customers to buy items, and stopping advertising from those brands. That’s a sure way to put a smaller business and mom-and-pop shops out of business.
The bottom line
Amazon sells almost half of everything bought online. Its dominance has come at the expense of workers, small businesses, and communities of color. Prime Day is just another way for Amazon to continue to get bigger and assert more dominance over our society and economy. If you are an Amazon Prime customer, you have the power to not feed Amazon’s toxic growth.
This Prime Day, don’t buy on Amazon.
At Kairos, we’re building a future where tech works for all. Are you in? Join the campaign: https://techisnotneutral.com/
