tumblr is massively wrong about the Amazon strike and there are a few key people trying to get the right information out and y’all are too focused on sticking it to Amazon to bother getting it right. @brainstatic started noticing yesterday that the dates people were posting were funky and @janothar started posting that even the Spanish strike isn’t starting on the 10th and yet y’all are still spreading this like it’s fact. I honestly have not seen a damn thing about the strike literally ANYWHERE but tumbr so I decided to use our good friend google and here’s what I’ve found.

On July 10, 2018, Reuters reported that the Spanish workers will participate in a 3 day strike starting on July 16. NOT July 10. The strike is also, according to this article, NOT across all of Spain or all of the EU but only at ONE location – the San Fernando warehouse. It is already the second walk out this warehouse is doing this year, but y’all weren’t even aware of the first one and now are misrepresenting this one. EuroWeekly News stated the same thing as Reuters.

As of this morning (July 11, 2018)), the Independent is reporting that activists are asking consumers not to participate in Prime Day sales to support striking workers. Not asking for a week-long boycott, just a boycott of Prime Day. The Independent also confirms Reuters’ reports that the strike is ONLY 1000 Spanish workers – it does not start on the 10th and it is not an international strike.

There are a handful of other sites reporting that the strike started on the 10th and that other EU countries are participating; however, as @brainstatic pointed out already, these all link back to the same .info site that is not reliable and is not backed by reliable news sources (unlike Reuters, which is a reliable news source). The .info site is also only a CALL to strike – it is NOT a statement of that anywhere other than Spain is striking. The Observer article that links to the .info site above also literally uses tumblr’s “the boycott starts on the 10th” as a source for the boycott starting on the 10th… meaning that TUMBLR started those rumors, not the Observer article, and there is no reliable source for the boycott starting on the 10th other than the fact that y’all made that shit up and some online news source picked it up and ran with it. You can’t use an article that sites you as the source as a source for your bullshit. Got it?

If you want to support the striking workers, know when they are striking and what they want from you. Know what the actual activists involved are calling for. Know when and where the strike is taking place. As of right now, the strike is ONLY in Spain, it is 3 days long starting on the 16th, and it is ONLY focused around Prime Day. It did not start yesterday on the 10th. It is primarily about raising wages and other similar issues in Spanish factories, which are unionized already. It is not about people dying in American Amazon factories. Having half-assed, half-researched boycotts here and there that do not correspond to the strikes and are not well coordinated is not going to make a point. Having an organized, well-informed, large movement is what gets your point across. So stop what you’ve been doing and do this right. Boycott Prime Day and stop spreading misinformation.

Sick Amazon ‘elves’ face sack

sauvamente:

rhythmic-idealist:

anduin:

thatdiabolicalfeminist:

‘The retailer, which last year made more than £6bn of revenues in
Britain, has a disciplinary system under which points are accrued for
illness. Workers are issued a penalty point for each episode of
sickness.

Workers are told that more than one point will result
in a “series of counselling and disciplinary meetings” and between four
and six points can result in dismissal.

In one case, a woman who spent three days in hospital with a kidney
infection was docked two points, reduced to one on appeal, despite
providing a hospital note.

The system has been revealed in an investigation by The Sunday Times at Amazon’s sorting depot in Dunfermline, Scotland.

The
undercover reporter was paid £7.35 per hour by an agency that supplies
workers to Amazon, but was left with less than the minimum wage after
paying £10 for the agency’s bus which took her to the site 40 miles from
her home in Glasgow.

It emerged this weekend that some low-paid
workers are camping out in woodland near the sorting depot to avoid
paying the bus costs and ensure they are left with more than the minimum
wage…

The reporter obtained a job with PMP Recruitment, one of the two main
agencies that hires and supervises workers at the Dunfermline depot.
The investigation found:

Workers being threatened with dismissal
if they accrued too many points for illness, late attendance or
absence, or for making too many errors or failing to hit productivity
targets.

A claim from a worker in Amazon’s on-site first-aid
clinic that workers were under pressure to hit targets and were
suffering injuries in the rush to collect products

Workers were
expected to cover more than 10 miles a day in the warehouse collecting
items, but water dispensers to ensure they avoided dehydration were
regularly empty

The reporter was told she had to sign an
opt-out of the working time directive, which limits weekly hours to 48,
in order to get a job.

The reporter was employed as a “temporary
warehouse operative” at Amazon’s vast plant in Fife. She worked in the
“picking” department, which involved retrieving items from across
several floors of the sprawling warehouse, according to orders displayed
on a handheld scanner she was given. She worked at least 10 hours a
day, with an unpaid 30-minute lunch break and two 15-minute paid breaks….

Under the system
set out in the Amazon temporary associate handbook, half a point is
issued to recruits who are late to work or late back from a break; one
point for “one period of sickness”; and three points for “no call, no
show”. The undercover reporter was told that anyone who was more than 30
seconds late in arriving at work or returning after a break would be
subject to the half-point penalty.

Workers were also told that if
they made more than one error a week in collecting items or failed to
hit productivity targets they could be subject to a disciplinary
process, which could result in dismissal.’

how the fuck are the unions allowing this???? disgusting

Support the Amazon general strike today, July 10th – do not buy from Amazon! Even if your intention is to make some kind of statement with your purchase – don’t, this is (as other bloggers before me have said) the equivalent of crossing a picket line and still handing them profit!

The strike is from today until the 18th a full week, stand in solidarity with the workers they deserve so much better than this

svlvan:

just bc i’ve seen this sentiment expressed by a lot of ppl who want to support the amazon worker’s strike but don’t know how:

buying from amazon during the period of the strike does nothing to benefit the striking workers. the purpose of the strike is not to “show amazon how crucial its workers are,” and placing more orders is not going to somehow “overwhelm” amazon’s warehouses. the purpose of the strike is to inhibit amazon’s ability to draw in profit. the workers are striking so that the facilities in which they work will no longer be able to function. this is part of a strategy of disrupting amazon’s logistics so that ultimately their profit margins fall and amazon execs will be forced to acknowledge the workers’ complaints and negotiate with them.

if you purchase from amazon during the strike, your money is still going into the same pockets as it would any other time. if you purchase during the strike, the labor necessary to handle your order is going to be passed onto someone else regardless—whether it’s a facility in another region, workers who aren’t striking, or workers who were brought in to replace the strikers. if you purchase during the strike, you are actively funding amazon’s strikebreaking ability. yes, maybe they won’t be able to ship your package on time, or it will never be shipped, and you’ll be refunded (or not!), but that in no way constitutes as a win for the strikers. purchasing something from amazon, regardless of the circumstances, serves only to benefit the corporation, not the workers who fulfill the orders from start to finish—that’s the point of why they’re striking in the first place.

on the other hand, by boycotting amazon in solidarity with the striking workers, you will be limiting amazon’s ability to draw a profit during a large sale event—companies like amazon rely on business tactics such as sales to extract as much profit as they can from their workers. boycotting prevents them from being able to do so.

if you’re interested in following the events of this strike, as well as other resistance efforts against amazon: https://amazonenlucha.wordpress.com/ is the website run by the organizers of the strike.

10 July 2018

thatdiabolicalfeminist:

icestormvulpix:

thatdiabolicalfeminist:

thatdiabolicalfeminist:

thatdiabolicalfeminist:

Reminder: Do not buy from Amazon or even open the website on 10 July 2018, in solidarity with the transnational strike.

Amazon workers in Spain have called for a transnational strike because Amazon has been avoiding accountability for its labour rights violations by merely shifting the work (and the human rights abuses Amazon inflicts on their workers) to non-striking countries, each time a strike occurs. If there is widespread striking transnationally, Amazon will have no choice but to recognize the strikers’ demands in order to keep their facilities functioning.

Our job as allies is to support the strike by avoiding using the Amazon website or purchasing anything from Amazon for as long as the strike continues. A mass boycott of the site, coinciding with the strike, will strengthen the workers’ bargaining position and could be crucial to Amazon workers gaining back basic rights in a variety of countries.

Explain this to your friends and family who might not have heard about the boycott or the strike or why it’s necessary.

Amazon workers are literally collapsing and sometimes dying in warehouses that do not all have climate control. A few years ago Amazon stationed ambulances outside their warehouses rather than just install AC to prevent mass heatstroke for their workers, but after media picked up the story they added AC to some – only some – of their warehouses.

These workers are forced into 10+ hour shifts during which they walk 10+ miles. They’re subject to a grueling pace and fired for minor mistakes. They are not allowed to sit down and are discouraged from using the bathroom, which is often so far away in the massive warehouse that there isn’t time to use it even during their breaks. They can be fired for being ill, even with proof they were in hospital.

They are being paid so little and working such long hours – and sometimes, being charged so much by Amazon-arranged transport shuttles to take them to warehouses far from any housing – that some are forced to sleep under bridges or in the woods near their workplace. Longtime warehouse workers are saying they’ve never seen the kinds of exploitation and abuse that occurs in an Amazon warehouse.

This strike and the accompanying boycott are to pressure Amazon into giving their workers basic rights that every worker should have.

This strike is timed to coincide with the European Prime Day, when working conditions will become even more intolerable and hours even longer.

US residents are encouraged to also boycott the US Prime Day July 15-16, 2018.

shouldn’t we buy shit to help show Amazon they NEED their employees?

I’ve seen a lot of comments like this, and I’d like to take this opportunity to explain!

A really common strike tactic in the pre-internet days was form a picket line. Basically, the striking workers would hold up signs explaining their strike and surround their place of work with a line of people all chanting and marching. This not only got the public interested in the strike, but it also physically blocked people from entering the business they were striking against.

When workers strike, businesses sometimes hire “scabs”, or workers willing to step in and replace the strikers to make the strike meaningless. A picket line would mean that even if the business got a full complement of scabs, they would still take a huge hit financially during the strike.

“Never cross a picket line” is something union and other pro-labour parents used to teach their children, and it meant both “never be a scab” and also “never patronize a business currently under strike.”

Amazon will likely hire scabs during a widespread strike to pick up at least some of the slack. But this time, workers can’t use a physical picket line to block access, because Amazon is an online business. But it’s still important to make sure the company isn’t able to bring in a lot of profits during the strike – hence the calls for boycott online.

Amazon knows they need their employees. They just think they can get away with abusing them. The boycott and the strike are not to convince them to think anything, it’s to make it so unprofitable to continue that they have no choice but to concede to the strikers’ demands.

pancakeke:

this is what happens to the employees who die in their warehouses

Reminder: Do not buy from Amazon or even open the website on 10 July 2018, in solidarity with the transnational strike.

Do not visit Amazon.com on 10 July 2018 (or July 15-16 in the US)!

Do not visit Amazon.com on 10 July 2018 (or July 15-16 in the US)!

The strike is from today until the 18th a full week, stand in solidarity with the workers they deserve so much better than this

Reminder: Do not buy from Amazon or even open the website on 10 July 2018, in solidarity with the transnational strike.

Explain this to your friends and family who might not have heard about the boycott or the strike or why it’s necessary.

US residents are encouraged to also boycott the US Prime Day July 15-16, 2018.