-More people are calling on others to cancel their Amazon Prime subscriptions.
-A massive exodus of Amazon Prime subscribers is still far from our present reality.
-Bezos is the richest man in the world, but a growing number of people believe that Amazon is “playing” US cities in its quest for a new HQ and treats its workers unfairly.
People have been aware of Amazon’s controversies for decades, from its monopolistic practices to tax avoidance, poor treatment of both white- and blue-collar workers, union-busting, environmental damage, and most recently, the year-long publicity stunt of HQ2, a bad-faith ploy to extract private data from US cities that ended with Amazon plopping its supposedly economy-boosting offices into the two most established markets on the East Coast. But yet consumers have yet to hold Amazon “socially responsible”.
Amazon is only getting bigger, and stories of employees who feel abused or disenfranchised are only becoming more common. On top of that, the Seattle-based company is starting to stretch its tentacles into new businesses, like groceries with its Whole Foods purchase and law enforcement with its new facial recognition software. There doesn’t seem to be any business that Amazon is afraid to tackle.
Because of backlash earlier this year Amazon raised warehouse workers’ salaries to $15 an hour but took away bonuses. It’s now estimated that the cities chosen for the new HQ are going to cost taxpayers $4 billion. Do hard working taxpayers really need to subsidize such a profitable company?
Despite all the talk about people buying from “socially responsible” brands Amazon had it’s biggest Black Friday day ever this year. Consumers have become addicted to Amazon Prime and the one-click ordering. I don’t think the backlash against Amazon is going to amount to much, but then consumers are unpredictable. Mr Bezos has built a great business, but it would be a great time to give back more to the people, and society, that helped him become so big.
