Amazon poses an existential threat to responsive democracy and is rightly the target of campaigns like Make Amazon Pay and coalitions like the UNI Global Amazon Alliance.
The world’s largest online retailer and cloud computing service, and its fifth-largest employer, there is no industry or community Amazon and its subsidiaries have not adversely impacted. The company has become notorious for its union busting and low wages on multiple continents, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissionsthrough its AWS data centres, corporate tax evasion, and lobbying at national and international level.
In the United States alone, where Amazon’s worker injury rate is twice as high as similar companies, the company has racked up more than US$250 million in fines for privacy, occupational health and safety, wage, and environmental violation cases filed by workers across sectors. Attempts to hold Amazon accountable to labour rights have led the company to challenge the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board in the U.S. In Canada, the company is trying to overturn provincial labour law. In Europe, Amazon was barred this year from lobbying within the European Parliament for its refusal to attend hearings on violations of worker rights in its warehouses, becoming only the second company in history to face such a sanction. Its refusal to negotiate with unions in Germany has resulted in a decade of strikes. In India, the company has admitted to breaching workplace safety standards in its warehouses.
Activists have pressed Amazon to sign the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Garment and Textile Industry, which it has so far refused to do. The Corporate Europe Observatory warned that, “Amazon’s utter disregard for democratic scrutiny of its exploitative business model will not be tolerated.”
Trade unions view peace as essential to democracy. Amazon, on the other hand, has transformed itself into a security and war contractor, a fact the company embraced in its promotional video, “Amazon Web Services for the Warfighter.” Its own employees have criticised the company’s business with governments that use its ATLAS software to target naturalised migrants and its Rekognition facial recognition software to “violate human rights.”
The sheer scale of Amazon’s global lobbying operation undermines the democratic responsiveness of governments and institutions to the general population. In Europe, Amazon “now declares funding over 60 business associations, 15 think-tanks and forums, and 1 NGO.” Its well-funded army of lobbyists attempt to influence policymakers on a host of issues: employment and labour policy, privacy rights, environmental sustainability, and more. This influence is not limited to local and national governments but extends to international institutions, where despite obvious conflicts of interest Amazon is eager to influence international policy on internet governance.
Amazon’s founder, longtime CEO, current board member, and one of the wealthiest individuals in human history, Jeffrey Bezos makes large contributions to political parties and boasts liberal views. A closer look, however, reveals that Amazon has supported the development of far-right politics through what The Guardian calls a “complex shell game” of political contributions that have been used to undermine women’s rights and antitrust legislation. It has also been found to platform right-wing groups and permits them toearn income online through Amazon.com and traffic propaganda using AWS services.
