Prime Day is upon us, a 48-hour interval through which to scoop nice offers on ProactivMD Adapalene Gel Acne Kits, amongst different choose gadgets. But deal-hunters know that it’s at all times clever to learn up on the vendor, so we thought we’d compile a latest information to Amazon’s enterprise practices. You can discover a shorter primer in this petition by 35 social justice organizations demanding that lawmakers ban Amazon’s panopticon-style surveillance and examine abuse.

First, a tip: Gizmodo’s Victoria Song has identified that Prime Day represents a chance for Amazon to unload junk at a beforehand inflated value with a view to trick us into signing up for Prime membership. It works. Amazon’s Prime Day statistics inform us that 26.6% of Americans plan at hand them cash on this unholy event.

“[M]any sellers artificially inflate prices so their crappy deals look more appealing on Prime Day,” Song wrote. She added that Prime Day forces Amazon sellers to pump up their costs earlier than Prime Day and that you could typically discover higher costs on different huge tech merchandise at competing shops. Just have a look at the wild fluctuations on this listing for a $34.99 third-generation Echo Dot sensible speaker, which was $18.99 in November 2020 and as much as $40 in April. (You can test CamelCamelCamel.com to keep away from getting screwed.)

If you’re nonetheless inquisitive about how that Echo Dot sensible speaker arrives at the doorstep, we’ve received blogs for you. This story shall be obtainable on the entrance web page for a restricted time solely! Don’t sleep on this weblog publish!

Amazon employees contract lethal virus

As the nation’s supply of important gadgets in a pandemic, Amazon was well-positioned to dispel the well-known claims that it treats employees as disposable. Instead, we learn nearly day by day reviews that sure Amazon warehouses didn’t comply with security tips, and employees claimed that Amazon didn’t alert them to the truth that colleagues had covid-19 in any respect or till it was too late. (It improved safeguards after employees all through the corporate protested.) While a lethal virus we knew little about unfold all through the world, the corporate confirmed it was prepared to step over our bodies to fill dildo orders. But wook at this good boy.

• March 2020: Lawmakers Demand Amazon Get Serious About Worker Safety Amid Covid-19 Pandemic [link]
• March 2020: Amazon Fires Worker Who Organized Strike Over Conditions Amid Coronavirus Outbreak [link]
• April 2020: Leaked Memo Shows Amazon Elite Outlining Smear Campaign Against Fired Employee: Report [link]
• May 2020: At Least 7 Amazon Workers Have Died of Covid-19 as Company Refuses to Release Official Numbers [link]
• October 2020: Nearly 20,000 Amazon Employees Have Contracted Covid-19 This Year [link]
• December 2020: California’s AG Is Now Trying to Force Amazon to Comply With Subpoenas Probing Covid Labor Concerns [link]
• February 2021: New York Attorney General Sues Amazon Over ‘Flagrant Disregard’ For Covid Safety [link]

Amazon beats again a union

This yr, low-wage warehouse employees pitted themselves in opposition to the world’s fifth-largest employer with a union drive at a warehouse within the small city of Bessemer, Alabama. After the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) reported {that a} majority of employees signed union authorization cards, Amazon plastered anti-union slogans in rest room stalls and subjected employees to prolonged captive-audience sessions attempting to convince them {that a} union would trigger them to lose cash. After employees voted in opposition to unionizing, RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum mentioned that Amazon had threatened to close the warehouse down. Some labor specialists advised Gizmodo that they have been not stunned when the vote failed.

• April 2020: The Biggest Threat to Amazon Is Human Well-Being [link]
• September 2020: Amazon Is Openly Hiring Union-Busters [link]
• January 2021: Amazon Warehouse Employees in Alabama Will Vote to Unionize [link]
• February 2021: Twitch Pulls Its Parent Company’s Union-Busting Ads [link]
• February 2021: Amazon Fails to Stall Unionization Vote in Alabama [link]
• March 2021: Inspired by Alabama Coworkers, Amazon Employees Nationwide Begin Union Talks: Report [link]
• April 2021: Amazon Union Vote Fails in Bessemer, as Union Calls for Investigation [link]
• April 2021: Emails Show Amazon Pressured USPS to Install Mailbox at Alabama Warehouse Ahead of Union Vote [link]
• April 2021: Union Moves for Results of Amazon Vote in Alabama to Be Invalidated [link]
• April 2021: Amazon’s Already Busted Out Its Anti-Union Playbook in Staten Island [link]

Amazon denies pee bottles, will get fined for stealing ideas, will increase hours, expands surveillance equipment

Sometime quickly after the vacations, Amazon sprung a grueling 10-to-eleven-hour in a single day shift on employees, lots of whom have claimed that they felt no selection however to take the shift or lose their jobs. (Amazon has mentioned that it gives different shifts elsewhere, however many have mentioned that the space is simply too far or that no such jobs have been obtainable and anticipate the megacycle to comply with them.) Proof emerged that Amazon’s shadow workforce of contracted drivers pee in bottles; Amazon went nuts denying it on Twitter; Jeff Bezos could have been behind a salvo of demented tweets; Amazon admitted that employees don’t have adequate entry to relaxation stops. In conserving with years of surging harm reviews at Amazon warehouses (24,000 severe accidents in 2020 alone), a variety of advocacy teams are petitioning for modifications.

• February 2021: Amazon Springs Ten-Hour ‘Megacycle’ Shifts on Its Workers [link]
• February 2021: Amazon Will Have to Pay Back the $61.7 Million It Swindled From Drivers’ Tips [link]
• February 2021: Amazon Announces Totally Not Alarming Plan to Install Surveillance Cameras in Every Delivery Vehicle [link]
• February 2021: Hundreds of Amazon Drivers Agree That They Deserve a Union in an Informal Driver-Led Survey [link]
• March 2021: Amazon Execs Apparently Need to See Some Pee Pics [link]
• March 2021: Amazon Is Getting Sued for Failing to Give Warehouse Workers Meal and Rest Breaks [link]
• April 2021: Amazon Mumbles ‘Sorry’ for Denying That Its Workers Pee in Bottles, Says Uber and UPS Drivers Do It, Too [link]
• April 2021: Amazon’s Worker-Crushing Megacycle Is Energizing a Battle [link]
• May 2021: Amazon: Overworked Warehouse Employees Can Go Reflect within the Despair Closet [link]

Amazon nibbles at small companies

At least we nonetheless have third-party sellers and the desiccated stays of brick-and-mortar shops, which makes us proud to stroll all the best way down the block to the 99 cent retailer for paper towels. That may not final lengthy, relying on whether or not the federal authorities will get it collectively and reforms antitrust regulation.

• June 2020: Amazon’s Reportedly Fielding Probes From California, Washington State Over Trade Practices [link]
• July 2020: Jeff Bezos Tells Congress He ‘Can’t Guarantee’ Amazon Isn’t Violating Its Own Policies to Undercut Sellers [link]
• August 2020: Amazon Can Add Germany and Canada to Its List of Investigation Headaches [link]
• October 2020: Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon Are the Big Monopolies You Thought They Were, Lawmakers Find [link]
• November 2020: Amazon Hit With Multibillion-Dollar Antitrust Action in EU [link]
• April 2021: Amazon Was Reportedly Considering a Chain of Discount Stores Before the Pandemic Hit [link]
• April 2021: Amazon Reportedly Pressures Small Businesses with Retaliation if They Don’t Hand Over User Data [link]
• April 2021: Amazon Is Opening a Hair Salon, Seriously [link]
• April 2021: Amazon Accused of Working With Book Publishers In Price-Fixing Scheme [link]

Amazon saves the surroundings perhaps

Amazon has promised to shift totally to renewable power for its operations by 2025, and Jeff Bezos has pledged to throw $10 billion to “save Earth,” which is lower than he made in a single day in the course of the pandemic. These are good and massive guarantees, however advocates and employees say that low-income communities close to exhaust-filled Amazon truck routes aren’t reaping the advantages. It’s unclear whether local weather refugees will get first dibs on the off-world house cities.

• June 2020: The Danger of Amazon’s $2 Billion Climate Fund [link]
• September 2020: The Amazonification of Climate Change Is Here [link]
• December 2020: Climate Polluters Write a Letter Asking to Be Lightly Regulated Please [link]
• December 2020: Five of 2020’s Top Climate Grifters [link]
• February 2021: Amazon Is Creating an Empire of Trash [link]
• April 2021: Amazon Can’t Just Change Its Rules to Squash [Climate] Activism, NLRB Finding Suggests [link]
• May 2021: Amazon Workers Are Petitioning the Company to Bring Its Pollution to Zero By 2030 [link]

Jeff Bezos made more cash than ever 

Jeff Bezos reclaimed his spot because the richest man on the planet. So unfathomably wealthy, that, in accordance with an Oxfam research, he might have paid each one among his 876,000 staff a $105,000 bonus and nonetheless damaged even. At least, that’s the dream.