With Coronavirus rampant and cities shut down, Amazon quickly rose to the top with their quick shipping and large selection of items. As the company continued to grow it was made apparent that they were creating unsafe working environments for their employees. With highly unreasonable demands such as 300 items picked within an hour to working 55hrs/10 days shifts. As complaints grew louder a previously fired employee managed to unionized a warehouse for the first time in the companies history. (Challenging Amazon Report, 2020)
Not only does the company participate in unethical/illegal practices in the U.S, but it is estimated that they could have cost the UK public $1.8billion due to their tax avoidance. Amazon also engaged in stopping a law in Seattle that focused on tackling the dire homelessness crisis the city faced by threatening to remove their public funding and support. (Boycott Amazon | Ethical Consumer, 2023)
After years of seeing extremely fast growth, the company saw a loss of $3.8billion in profits for the year 2022 (Kohan, 2022). While this is mainly due to the reopening of the world post COVID, but also because of the massive controversy surrounding the company. Viral videos are posting recommending their viewers to no longer support Amazon due to their poor working conditions and how unfairly they treat their workers. It is also estimated that the company lost 2 million prime memberships within the year 2022 indicating that Amazon is seeing a lack of growth. (Kim, 2023)
If the company wishes to succeed and continue to see growth it would be beneficial to better their employees working conditions as well as improve their benefits to ensure that they are providing a fair and desired compensation. Amazon should be socially-responsible and pay their taxes to help fund the communities that purchase from them.
References:
Boycott Amazon | Ethical Consumer. (2023, March 15). Ethical Consumer. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcampaigns/boycott-amazon
Challenging Amazon Report. (2020, October 12). TUC. https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/challenging-amazon-report?page=2#section_header
Kim, E. (2023, January 18). Amazon’s Prime membership program stopped growing in the US for the first time ever, according to new estimates. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-shopping-prime-membership-us-stopped-growing-first-time-ever-2023-1#:~:text=Amazon%20ended%20last%20year%20with,largest%20market%2C%20according%20to%20CIRP.
Kohan, S. E. (2022, April 28). Amazon Loses $3.8 Billion In Profits But Andy Jassy Is Not Concerned. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleykohan/2022/04/28/amazon-loses-38-billion-in-profits-but-andy-jassy-is-not-concerned/?sh=7678eb63656e
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