https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/12/23/amazon-opportunity-zone-tax-breaks/

Excerpt:

Amazon has been heavily expanding into areas that the government designates for special tax incentives, according to a new analysis that comes amid growing regulatory scrutiny of the e-commerce giant.

The company has located delivery stations, fulfillment centers and even an air hub in “opportunity zones,” regions across the country where investors can qualify for capital gains tax breaks under a 2017 law.

The initiative had bipartisan backing and was intended to incentivize investment in some of the most economically distressed regions of the country. But critics of the program have raised concerns that such programs further enrich wealthy investors and corporations for projects that would have happened without government assistance.

And because there aren’t requirements that investors and corporations publicly report how they are using the tax breaks, it’s difficult to measure impact. Experts say it’s impossible to know if the program is having the intended effect of creating jobs and affordable housing — or simply exacerbating economic divides.

Courage Campaign announcement:

While Amazon is raking in billions of dollars off the backs of its employees, Courage California will be leading a conversation with representatives from grassroots and labor organizations across the state about how we are making gains in stopping the mega retailer’s exploitive worker practices.

Will you join us on November 29 at 12 noon PST to help Deliver Us From Amazon?

Amazon is decimating the workforce it employs as well as small businesses.

More than 160,000 businesses have closed during covid, while Amazon uses algorithms to push small retailers down in search results and replicates their products to sell itself.

The warehouses that Amazon builds are environmentally hazardous, and the employees are held to unreasonable quotas that cause injuries at twice the rate of the industry average. And average worker wages sink where Amazon warehouses take hold.

That’s why we’ve joined a coalition of workers’ rights groups to stand up to Amazon. Our town hall attendees will hear from speakers from organizations including:

• The Warehouse Worker Resource Center
• Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability
• United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5
• Center on Policy Initiatives
• Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy

On Cyber Monday, you can join our Amazon boycott and get involved with a statewide movement to stop the mega retailer’s terrible practices. We hope to see you there!

Click here to register for the town hall on November 29 at 12 pm!

6109481ae4b0552883e5928e.pdf (huffingtonpost.com)

Excerpt:

“On April 9, 2021, a tally of ballots issued in a mail ballot election that had commenced on February 8, 2021. That tally reflected that a majority of employees who had cast ballots in the election voted against representation by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (Petitioner or Union). However, the Petitioner contests the results of the election claiming that Amazon.Com Services, LLC (Employer or Amazon) engaged in objectionable conduct. As a
result of this objectionable conduct, Petitioner asks that the election be set aside and that a new election be directed. Specifically, the Petitioner contends that the Employer interfered with the …conditions necessary to conduct a fair election by causing a mailbox to be installed on
its premises, by polling employees, by threatening employees, by hiring additional police, and by interfering with the Union’s access to voters by causing the county to alter the timing of certain traffic lights.
After conducting the hearing and carefully reviewing the evidence and the arguments made by the parties, I recommend that Petitioner’s objections be sustained in part because the evidence demonstrates that the Employer’s conduct interfered with the laboratory conditions
necessary to conduct a fair election.”

With Amazon Accused of Cheating, NLRB Official Says Workers Should Get Another Union Vote | Common Dreams News

Excerpt:

An official at the National Labor Relations Board on Monday formally recommended tossing out the results of a closely watched union election at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, potentially giving workers there a chance to hold another vote as the e-commerce giant faces accusations of unlawful misconduct.

https://blackagendareport.com/how-amazon-exploited-weakened-america

Excerpt:

Amazon will not stop squeezing every drop from workers until those workers have more power.

“The book is less an examination of the company than an examination of America through its lens.”

Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America
Alec MacGillis
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 9780374159276

During the Covid-19 pandemic, one in four Americans has struggled to pay their bills, and as of mid-January, unemployment claims surpassed those of the Great Recession for the forty-third straight week. As of February, more than 24 million people reported that their households sometimes didn’t have enough to eat. Many lower-income Americans continued to report for in-person jobs without proper protective equipment in dangerously crowded environments like meatpacking plants, warehouses, and hospitals.

For those who could work from home, it became “our patriotic duty” to buy online, wrote ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis in a November New York Times op-ed. Flattening the curve put the nail in the coffin of in-person retail, which had already endured record closures in 2019. Amazon, meanwhile, hired 250,000 people, taking the total to over a million employees globally. Most of those jobs sucked: They were largely in warehouse and delivery, which have become notoriously brutal jobs at Amazon both physically and mentally (but we’ll get to that). Nine months into 2020, and six months into the pandemic, Amazon had already surpassed its 2019 earnings.