Amazon

Amazon hires diverse employees from varied backgrounds to promote inclusive work environment

Diversity and inclusion is key in the workplace. Unfortunately, among the Fortune 500 companies, black or African American represented only 1% of the total CEO positions in 2019¹. In the US, the average rate of unemployment in 2018 was 3.2%, compared to 6.5% for black or African Americans¹. More specifically, in the e-commerce sector, women make up only 13% of the CEO roles in the top 100 companies⁸.

Amazon increased its 2019 air freight flights by 38% in 2020, ignoring its CO2 reduction promises

The global aviation industry is responsible for 2% of all human CO2 emissions, the equivalent of 915 million tonnes of gas in 2019¹, and is growing to represent 22% of the emissions in 2050². The coronavirus pandemic significantly lowered the aviation industry's revenue and set a new opportunity to reevaluate its efforts to address the climate emergency when it comes to CO2 emissions³. 

Amazon is accused of employing school children and making them work overtime

Globally around 152 million children between the age of 5 and 17 are deprived of their childhood because of child labor practices¹. Almost 73 million children work in hazardous conditions, and nearly 22,000 child laborers die at work annually¹.

Amazon is contributing to the decrease in both the quality and quantity of human interactions, necessary for a healthy life, on a daily basis

Social interaction is a critically important contributor to good health and longevity.⁵ Social isolation is on a par with high blood pressure, obesity, lack of exercise or smoking as a risk factor for illness and early death.⁵ People who are chronically lacking social contacts are more likely to experience elevated levels of stress and inflammation.⁵ Contemporary innovations have significantly reduced the need for human-to-human exchanges, favoring time and cost-efficient, non-human alternatives.²

Amazon fails to deliver on its position of offering women equal pay

Despite the persistent story that the gender pay gap is steadily closing in the Global North, in many countries, the gap is, in fact, widening^1;p96. For example, in the EU, women earn 16% less per hour than men (with considerable differences between Member States)². The drivers of this are sectoral segregation, share of unpaid to paid work, glass ceilings and outright discrimination². Several regional and global conventions & regulations exist to combat the issue, through e.g., the International Labour Organisation (ILO)³ and the UN through three Sustainable Development Goals (5, 8 & 10)⁴. Nevertheless, the issue persists, and employers regularly downplay the issue.

The Amazon group positions itself as a champion of gender equality⁵. However, Amazon has a smudged track record of first claiming to provide equal pay between genders^6,7,8, and then being confronted with evidence to the contrary^6,7,11. The discrepancy often comes down to the definition of 'pay gap'^11,13,14, and which departments and pay classes are included in analysis. As Amazon is a multinational company, with distinctly different situations across countries and departments, let's look at Amazon UK, where the gender pay gap ranges from 2% to 40% between departments⁹. Amazon UK reports a pay gap of 6.1%, but a closer look at the 2017 data⁹ shows that the average is greatly influenced by male-dominated low paying warehouse jobs, and in most departments, women get paid significantly less than the men^9,10,11. Amazon is not always worse than the UK average employer in this regard, but their insistence on being better than they are ruins their 'OK' record.

As apparent from the several news stories & reports above, Amazon fails to deliver on its position that it provides women with equal opportunities and pay. In conclusion, it seems that the company cherry-picks statistics that are favourable to its narrative as a company that is close to closing the gender wage gap^6,11.