400 politicians ask Amazon to raise workers' wages

United under the acronym "Make Amazon Pay", parliamentarians from 34 countries across Europe, the United States, South America and Asia signed for Jeff Bezos, demanding that he pay even more taxes

(Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP ) (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON / AFP / Getty Images) In the days when Amazon closed another record Black Friday that saw the company earn over $ 9 billion, according to data reported by Cnbc, the giant of ' ecommerce has returned to the center of criticism for its tax privileges and the working conditions of its employees. An international front of 401 politicians and institutional personalities from 34 countries jointly signed an open letter addressed to Jeff Bezos calling for an end to the company's "days of impunity".

Following the mobilization of protest and the strikes that last November 27, the day of Black Friday, saw workers, trade unions, activists and politicians unite in various countries under the request "Make Amazon Pay", on December 3 the international trade union federation Uni Global Union and the 'Progressive International organization have prepared the appeal signed by politicians around the world and addressed directly to the president and CEO of the Seattle giant.

In the letter, the signatories are basically asking that Amazon start paying more taxes in the countries where your services are active, raise the minimum wage of your employees and incur higher costs to implement p policies to reduce the environmental impact. All based on the premise that "the world knows that Amazon can afford to pay its workers, its environmental costs and its taxes".

Among the signatories, there are mainly politicians belonging to environmentalist, democratic and left parties, such as the British Labor Jeremy Corbyn, the former Greek Economy Minister Yanis Varoufakis or the Vice President of the European Parliament, Heidi Hautala .

Other demands made by activists and politicians also concern greater rights for workers, trade union guarantees, greater employment security and even greater safety at work, a point on which Amazon has been harshly criticized in several countries in recent months regarding the health safety standards needed in its warehouses and sorting centers during the first wave of the Covid-19 emergency. The same company, moreover, has admitted that its infected workers were over 20 thousand in the United States alone.

And precisely from those protests, the mobilizations and initiatives that took place on the occasion of Black Friday 2020 were born in different countries. In Italy, for example, the CGIL, which supports the Make Amazon Pay movement, has organized its "Red Friday" online to talk about the workers' rights of Amazon and other platforms.

For its part, the company defends itself and responds to the allegations of the signatories of this letter reiterating that the company "offers a strong experience of support to employees, customers and their communities, including safe working conditions, competitive wages and great benefits," reports the Washington Post .

On the taxation front, on the other hand, after the stalemate on the web tax shared in the OECD headquarters, in Europe France, where Amazon has also found an agreement to move Black Friday, has announced that it will return to apply its taxation of 3% on the turnover of the giants of the web with over 750 million euros in annual revenues. From this measure, Paris in 2019 collected more than 400 million euros, and now aims to do the same to support an economy severely tested by the crisis.