thatdiabolicalfeminist:

thatdiabolicalfeminist:

Reminder: Do not buy from Amazon or even open the website on 10 July 2018, in solidarity with the transnational strike.

Amazon workers in Spain have called for a transnational strike because Amazon has been avoiding accountability for its labour rights violations by merely shifting the work (and the human rights abuses Amazon inflicts on their workers) to non-striking countries, each time a strike occurs. If there is widespread striking transnationally, Amazon will have no choice but to recognize the strikers’ demands in order to keep their facilities functioning.

Our job as allies is to support the strike by avoiding using the Amazon website or purchasing anything from Amazon for as long as the strike continues. A mass boycott of the site, coinciding with the strike, will strengthen the workers’ bargaining position and could be crucial to Amazon workers gaining back basic rights in a variety of countries.

Explain this to your friends and family who might not have heard about the boycott or the strike or why it’s necessary.

Amazon workers are literally collapsing and sometimes dying in warehouses that do not all have climate control. A few years ago Amazon stationed ambulances outside their warehouses rather than just install AC to prevent mass heatstroke for their workers, but after media picked up the story they added AC to some – only some – of their warehouses.

These workers are forced into 10+ hour shifts during which they walk 10+ miles. They’re subject to a grueling pace and fired for minor mistakes. They are not allowed to sit down and are discouraged from using the bathroom, which is often so far away in the massive warehouse that there isn’t time to use it even during their breaks. They can be fired for being ill, even with proof they were in hospital.

They are being paid so little and working such long hours – and sometimes, being charged so much by Amazon-arranged transport shuttles to take them to warehouses far from any housing – that some are forced to sleep under bridges or in the woods near their workplace. Longtime warehouse workers are saying they’ve never seen the kinds of exploitation and abuse that occurs in an Amazon warehouse.