|
Hi,
Yesterday, an expose on Amazon's low-wage platform "Mechanical Turk" revealed that Amazon’s monopoly power is harming workers, many of whom are disabled and have no other source of income.
Because of Amazon's monopoly power, they allow extreme low wages on this platform -- one worker said they were only paid 50 cents to talk about the most painful memory of their life.1,2
Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform workers say they’ve been asked "to send along their underwear, take photos of their feet, or to draw pictures of their genitals. They say they have been paid to recount traumatic instances in their lives—a cancer diagnosis, severe depression, or the death of a loved one—often for less than a dollar."
Big technology monopolies like Amazon have severely damaged democracy and our economy, and they’re a threat to their workers, immigrants, and the environment.
We must get 2020 candidates involved in the fight to hold big tech monopolies responsible for the damage they’ve created in our communities.
Thanks for taking action to protect us from destructive tech monopolies,
Salma and the team at Demand Progress
Sources:
1. Gizmodo, "Horror Stories From Inside Amazon's Mechanical Turk," January 28th, 2020.
2. The Washington Post, "Online labor markets may look competitive. They aren’t.," August 2nd, 2018.
(See my earlier email below for more information.)
Jeff Bezos’ reckless empire-building is a threat to all of us.
Amazon is a threat to democracy. Jeff Bezos builds his empire by trying to buy elections and bullying politicians who try to help the homeless.1,2
And now Amazon has expanded its monopoly into providing election technology -- which allows Amazon to access and store our voter registration and voting history, including the candidates we voted for.3
Amazon's monopoly power is out of control. Some 2020 presidential candidates have joined grassroots calls to break up big tech companies including Amazon -- but not all of the candidates are on board.4
We need to get all 2020 candidates to commit to fighting back against technology monopolies.
Amazon is a threat to its workers -- the company ruins the bodies of its warehouse workers with brutal, inhumane quotas.5
Amazon helps Trump traumatize immigrants -- it provides technology that helps ICE cage children and conduct immigration raids.6
Amazon uses its monopoly power to:
- rig the rules of the economy to their own advantage;
- mine and profit from our personal data;
- work us to exhaustion and injury;
- pit communities against each other;
- help deport us and cage our children;
- pollute and gentrify our neighborhoods (even threatening to fire employees who speak up against Amazon's contributions to the destruction of our climate);7,8
- and corrode our democracy.
All to expand the private empire of Jeff Bezos, the richest man in history.
And Amazon now “runs state and county election websites, stores voter registration rolls and ballot data, facilitates overseas voting by military personnel and helps provide live election-night results.”9
We can’t let a corporation with as terrible a record as Amazon run our elections. We need 2020 candidates to commit to taking action.
We can win this. Pressure from political leaders and the grassroots is working.
Some 2020 candidates have joined grassroots calls for a break up of dangerous big tech monopolies. The Federal Trade Commission has widened the scope of the antitrust investigation of Amazon,10 and Congress has led a series of investigations into the danger of big tech monopolies.11
And Demand Progress has been working behind the scenes for months to help launch Athena, a coalition of three dozen grassroots organizations leading the resistance to Amazon.12
Athena coalition members have already secured key victories together. But if we’re going to win big, we need all 2020 candidates to commit to breaking up big tech.
Thanks for defending the future of our democracy and economy,
Salma and the team at Demand Progress
Sources:
1. The Atlantic, "How Amazon Helped Kill a Seattle Tax on Business," June 13th, 2018.
2. Mother Jones, "Amazon Spent a Ton of Money on Seattle Elections. It Probably Wasn’t Worth It.," November 8th, 2019.
3. Reuters, "How Amazon.com moved into the business of U.S. elections," October 15th, 2019.
4. Reuters, "Where U.S. presidential candidates stand on breaking up Big Tech," October 29th, 2019.
5. The Verge, "‘Beat the Machine’: Amazon warehouse workers strike to protest inhumane conditions," July 16th, 2019.
6. Mijente, "New Report Exposes Tech & Data Companies Behind ICE," October 23rd, 2018.
7. BBC News, "Amazon 'threatens to fire' climate change activists," January 3rd, 2020.
8. Partnership for Working Families, "Bad Deal, Bad Company, Bad Billionaire: How Proposed Taxpayer Subsidies for Amazon HQ2 Can Still Be Stopped," December 19th, 2018.
9. Reuters, "How Amazon.com moved into the business of U.S. elections," October 15th, 2019.
10. Bloomberg, "Amazon Faces Widening U.S. Antitrust Scrutiny in Cloud Business," December 4th, 2019.
11. U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, "Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets," Accessed December 18th, 2019.
12. The New York Times, "Activists Build a Grass-Roots Alliance Against Amazon," November 26th, 2019.
PAID FOR BY DEMAND PROGRESS (DemandProgress.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Contributions are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. Join our online community on Facebook or Twitter.
You can unsubscribe from this list at any time.