Amazon Workers Launch Global Black Friday Strike

Amazon workers in 20 countries will strike on Black Friday, challenging the company’s labor practices, demanding fair wages, union rights, and meaningful climate action through the global Make Amazon Pay campaign.

From London to Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere, the protests-coordinated by the Swiss-based UNI Global Union and Progressive International-will include activists in the UK delivering a 110,000-signature petition protesting tax breaks for Amazon; the GMB union is organizing an online worker rally. Union leaders say this is a matter of systemic issues: insecure work, poor wages, and unsafe working conditions-and what they think represent the wider economic injustices.

Amazon claims to pay competitive salaries and benefits. For UK starters, it claims the salary is £28,000 per year, plus an assertion that it’s the world’s largest buyer of renewable energy. Amazon Employees for Climate Justice points to a lack of intermediate steps toward the company’s stated target of net zero by 2040 and how, since 2019, the level of carbon emissions rose 34.5%.