Richard Wolff
Tag: Amazon
How Amazon, Google, and Facebook Helped Fund the Campaign to Overturn Roe
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the country’s top internet companies quickly responded with commitments to help employees in states that moved to ban abortion. In an implicit signal of support for abortion rights, the companies said they would help those employees seek abortions in states where the procedure remains legal.
In the years leading up to the seismic reproductive rights decision, however, the tech giants sponsored a controversial group that’s worked tirelessly to put the Supreme Court under conservative control, setting the stage for Roe’s reversal.
The Independent Women’s Forum traces its origins back to the 1991 fight to confirm the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas. Since then, the group has expanded into promoting a litany of perennial right-wing causes like climate denial, immigration alarmism, and deregulation, but a conservative-dominated Supreme Court remained a focus.
Public relations plays a key role in its operation. With savvy self-branding as a pro-woman organization, the group fought for the appointment of conservative justices to the
— source theintercept.com | Sam Biddle | Oct 1 2022
Google and Amazon workers condemn Project Nimbus
We are Google and Amazon workers. We condemn Project Nimbus
We are writing as Google and Amazon employees of conscience from diverse backgrounds. We believe that the technology we build should work to serve and uplift people everywhere, including all of our users. As workers who keep these companies running, we are morally obligated to speak out against violations of these core values. For this reason, we are compelled to call on the leaders of Amazon and Google to pull out of Project Nimbus and cut all ties with the Israeli military. So far, more than 90 workers at Google and more than 300 at Amazon have signed this letter internally. We are anonymous because we fear retaliation.
We have watched Google and Amazon aggressively pursue contracts with institutions like the US Department of Defense, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), and state and local police departments. These contracts are part of a disturbing pattern of militarization, lack of transparency and avoidance of oversight.
Continuing this pattern, our employers signed a contract called Project Nimbus to sell dangerous technology to the Israeli military and government. This contract was signed the
— source theguardian.com | 12 Oct 2021
Amazon’s Investments in Israel Reveal Complicity in Settlements and Military Operations
On Prime Day, Amazon’s largest online shopping event, the company will be looking to beat its previous sales record of $10.4 billion. Increasingly, customers have grown critical of Amazon’s treatment of workers, union-busting activities, and partnerships with police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leading some to call for a boycott of Prime Day. What Amazon Prime members may not realize, however, is that Amazon is also aiding in the spread of military occupation abroad.
Amid Israel’s most recent deadly attacks on the Gaza Strip and ongoing displacement of Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah, Amazon Web Services (AWS), together with Google, recently signed a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government. The deal, “Project Nimbus,” is a flagship project to provide a cloud services “ecosystem” for the Israeli public sector, for which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) will be the primary beneficiary. Construction has already begun on three data server centers.
Amazon claims the deal will “empower” innovative startups and “fuel economic development across the country.” Left unsaid is that a key objective of Project Nimbus is Israeli
— source thenation.com | Charmaine Chua, Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, Spencer Louis Potiker | Jun 22, 2021
This Is How Amazon Is Fueling the Climate Crisis
One benefit that Amazon has provided society with is a reduction in shopping-related violence. The once legendary fights over low-priced electrical items have moved online, and the fight is now between who has the fastest fingers and the fastest internet connection. Black Friday, however, continues to supercharge an already hyper-consumerist society and push us closer to climate breakdown. Extinction Rebellion (XR) decided to call out the major online retailer on its most profitable day by blocking fifteen fulfillment centers in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands. The fulfillment centers blockaded account for 50% of Amazon deliveries in the UK. In all, more than thirty arrests were made as the environmental group brought attention to Amazon’s wasteful business practices, tax avoidance and worker exploitation.
While XR’s detractors claim businesses are being affected in tough economic times, one man who has certainly not been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic is the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. As people around the world hunkered down in their homes due to the deadly virus sweeping the planet, Amazon shares soared 8% as people switched to online shopping as bricks and mortar shops remained shuttered. In a single day in July 2020, the world’s richest man added $13 billion to his already burgeoning fortune. His net worth rose from $113 billion in March 2020 to over $200 billion today.
Now, many will counter that Mr. Bezos deserves his wealth because he had the foresight to start Amazon back in the early days of the internet and he is a hardworking benign
— source commondreams.org | Simon Whalley | Nov 28, 2021
Why the fight against AMAZON in Bessemer matters
America’s Elderly Itinerant Workforce
Amazon fired two workers who helped organize the first successful union in US
Amazon has fired two workers who helped organize the first successful U.S. union at Amazon’s Staten Island JFK8 warehouse. This comes as the National Labor Relations Board on Monday upheld a complaint that Amazon violated labor law in the Staten Island union vote by holding mandatory worker meetings to dissuade employees from voting to unionize. We speak with the fired workers, Tristan “Lion” Dutchin and Mat Cusick, who say they need the support of the NLRB and pro-worker legislation to protect them against retaliation by Amazon.
The reason for my firing was, as mentioned, productivity, not meeting the certain time rate or goal. I was recently terminated May the 7th due to falling behind rates. I fell behind rates in the past, of course, me just being a regular worker working at a regular pace. These people expect you to work really fast, like to speed it up. They expect you to pick items for like 275 an hour at a universal station and 375 an hour at the ARSAW station.
They sent a couple of retrains, you know, people to retrain me, from time and time again. My last retrain was, I think, three weeks ago. After that, that’s when I started to, like, speed it up
— source democracynow.org | May 11, 2022
