Amazon in Winter

In November 2000, we posted the news of Amazon's union-busting activities at its customer-service center in Seattle. On January 30th 2001, Amazon announced that it was sacking 15% of its workforce -- including all of those customer-service jobs at the flagship Seattle office.

As if to confirm the point of organizers that Amazon's employees needed union protection, the once-mighty e-commerce behemoth has laid off the lot. Bad news? For Amazon's workers, surely. But as Jeetil Patel, analyst at Deutsche Banc Alex Brown, said on the 30th, 'Black Tuesday': "The deeper the operating expense reductions, the better they will be regarded by Wall Street."

Update, 8 Feb: Amazon is trying to force its fired workers to sign an indemnity agreement -- in violation of US labor law -- to receive their severance package. Find out more -- and WRITE TO AMAZON -- here.
 

What can you do about this?

1. Read our updated history of Amazon, with information on the job cuts.

2. Read about Amazon's indemnity 'agreement', which workers are being forced to sign to receive their severance cash -- and write to Amazon to protest this illegal insistence.

3. Leave a message of support for the sacked workers on their organizing website.

4. Write to Amazon and stress the following:

  - you object to their union-busting and intimidation.

  - you deplore their 'outsourcing' of customer-service jobs and their betrayal of loyal Seattle staff.

  - you urge Amazon to compensate its workers fairly, and to safeguard remaining jobs by allowing unions
     to organize Amazon workers inside and beyond the US.

5. Read Drew Levy's seasonal tale of Amazon's Christmas 2000 misbehavior.

6. Get nostalgic for our earlier Amazon page, when we were fighting for union recognition but Amazon's employees at least had their jobs. It can always get worse....
 

Did Amazon nuke its Seattle facility to wipe out any traces of union organizing? Not directly, though its devastating cutbacks reflect some old realities in the 'New Economy':

1. Many companies have little or no loyalty to their workers, in spite of their supposedly 'fun' working environments, stock-option bribes and free massages.

2. Companies like Amazon have to cut every corner to appease Wall St., and the interests of investors are often diametrically opposed to the interests of workers.

3. Amazon, like most other companies, will try to find the cheapest possible labor rather than pay a fair wage in the US -- it's no surprise, then, to hear that Amazon's Seattle customer-service reps are to be replaced by workers from India, who'll work for a fraction of the cost of living in Washington state.