October, 13 2020, 12:00am EDT
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Ahead of Prime Day, Amazon Must Respect Workers' Right to Unionize
As consumers prepare for Amazon Prime Day - a massive global sale event for Prime customers starting on Tuesday, October 13 - Amnesty International calls on the e-commerce company to respect workers' rights, in particular, the right to join and form trade unions.
WASHINGTON
As consumers prepare for Amazon Prime Day - a massive global sale event for Prime customers starting on Tuesday, October 13 - Amnesty International calls on the e-commerce company to respect workers' rights, in particular, the right to join and form trade unions.
"Amnesty International is alarmed by the growing evidence in recent months that Amazon is interfering with workers' rights to organize, and investing significant resources in monitoring workers and the perceived 'threat' of potential trade union activity," said Michael Kleinman, the Director of Amnesty International's Silicon Valley Initiative. "Amazon's own annual reports have identified the existence of labour unions as a risk factor in their international operations."
On October 6, Recode reported that a leaked internal memo obtained included plans by Amazon to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to monitor union 'threats' through a new technology system called "geoSPatial Operating Console". While Amazon did not comment on whether the memo was genuine, its spokesperson told Recode that the company respects "employees' right to join, form or not to join a labor union or other lawful organization of their own selection, without fear of retaliation, intimidation or harassment."
In September, Amazon put out job advertisements for intelligence analysts responsible for tracking risks including "labor organizing threats against the company". Amazon has since removed the job advertisements and stated that their posting was an error.
Also in September, internal Amazon documents obtained by Vice News show that the company has been secretly monitoring and analyzing workers' private Facebook groups, including for the purpose of tracking plans for strike action or protests.
While Amazon claims that they respect workers' right to join and form trade unions, it has not publicly disavowed the claims about surveillance and tracking of worker organizing and labour union activity. In a letter on September 21, 2020, Amnesty International asked Amazon for further information on this issue. On October 5, Amnesty International sent further correspondence to Amazon but has not received a reply yet.
Amazon's efforts to discourage workers from organizing are not new, and the company's own annual reports have identified the existence of works councils or labour unions as a risk factor in their international operations. For example, in the UK, Amazon has repeatedly in the past years issued legal notices for alleged trespassing and threats of injunctions to GMB union organizers who have attempted to approach and talk to workers outside of Amazon facilities. Furthermore, GMB organizers told Amnesty International that staff from Amazon human resources have confiscated and ripped up their pro-union leaflets handed out to workers once the worker was onsite.
In the U.S., warehouse workers who spoke out for their rights and raised concerns about working conditions during COVID-19, appear to have faced disciplinary action or have been subsequently fired.
International human rights law is clear that everyone has the right to form and join the trade union of their choice, and that trade unions play a fundamental role in ensuring respect for the right to work, including the right to just and favorable conditions of work. Under International Labour Organization (ILO) standards, union membership or participation in union activities must not be a cause of a dismissal or otherwise prejudice against a worker.
Amazon also has a responsibility to respect human rights, as articulated in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The UNGPs make clear that the responsibility to respect human rights "...is a global standard of expected conduct for all business enterprises wherever they operate... and it exists over and above compliance with national laws and regulations protecting human rights." This includes the responsibility to respect the rights to freedom of association, assembly and expression.
The importance of respecting the role of unions at workplaces became even more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been numerous examples demonstrating how unions and workers organizations were critical in protecting the human rights of Amazon's workforce and obtaining better health and safety measures and other protections from the company. These experiences show the close link between the right to organize, collective bargaining and the health and safety of workers.
For example, in France, unions helped to secure "health guarantees, a voluntary return to work for workers, adjusted schedules to help with distancing, and increased pay of EUR 2 per hour through the end of May." In Italy, unions helped to secure in an agreement "constant cleaning processes and programmed and traced sanitizations; scheduling of work activities and organization of workstations with the guarantee that there is always at least two meters of distance between workers".
Despite Amazon's public expressions of appreciation and gratitude to the company's workers, these sentiments do not seem to extend to the right to unionize. Amnesty International has communicated these concerns to Amazon in letters in April and September 2020. In its response to Amnesty International letter in April 2020 it stated "(o)ur approach on human rights is informed by international standards; we respect and support the Core Conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights".
Amnesty International calls on Amazon to genuinely respect the rights of workers to join and form trade unions and to protect the rights of workers who speak out on human rights issues within their workplace.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
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Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that one campaigner linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
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"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
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However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
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"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
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Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
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Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
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Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
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In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
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The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
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The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
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Vance "meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children."
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After days of condemnation from critics including actress Jennifer Aniston and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. JD Vance was given the opportunity on Thursday to clarify his remarks from 2021 in which he said the Democratic Party was run by "childless cat ladies."
Instead, the Ohio Republican and running mate of former President Donald Trump assured SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly on "The Megyn Kelly Show" that while he has "nothing against cats," he meant what he said in terms of "the substance" of his argument.
Vance made it clear, said Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), "that he meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children."
The comments in question were made by Vance to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson when Vance was running for the Senate.
Calling out Buttigieg—who, the secretary disclosed this week, was struggling at the time to adopt a child with his husband—and Vice President Kamala Harris, a stepmother of two and the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, Vance said people without biological children "don't really have a direct stake in" the future of the country and therefore shouldn't hold higher office.
In separate remarks that same year, Vance said parents should "have more power" at the voting booth and that "if you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice."
He also specifically categorized people who don't have children as "bad" in an interview in 2021, saying the government should "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad," with people taxed at a lower rate if they have children.
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In his interview with Kelly on Thursday, Vance attempted to pivot away from his own comments, saying his point was to criticize "the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child" and claiming without evidence that the Harris campaign had "come out against the child tax credit"—a signature policy of the Biden-Harris administration.
"I'm proud to stand for parents and I hope that parents out there recognize that I'm a guy who wants to fight for you," said Vance. "The Democrats, in the past five, 10 years, Megyn, they have become anti-family. It's built into their policy, it's built into the way they talk about parents and children. I don't think we should back down from it, I think we should be honest about the problem."
Vance and Kelly went on to lament the anxiety "hardcore environmentalists" and progressive lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have expressed about the damage fossil fuel extraction is doing the planet, accusing them of pushing people to forgo having families—but said nothing about Republican policies that have made child-rearing less accessible.
In recent years, the entire Republican caucus in Congress was joined by conservative then-Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia in blocking the extension of the enhanced child tax credit, which had been credited with cutting the national child poverty rate in half. Republicans also allowed a pandemic-era universal school meal program to expire, while several Democratic-led states have passed state-level programs to ensure all children can have meals at school, regardless of their family's income.
Under Republican abortion bans, numerous stories have cropped up of pregnant people who have been forced to carry pregnancies to term despite finding out that their fetuses had fatal abnormalities and would die soon after birth—as have stories of children who were forced to give birth or had to cross state lines in order to get abortion care.
As with his position that nonparents should be "punished" for not having children, "who else does 'pro-child/family' Vance think should 'face consequences and reality' by way of curtailing choices, rights, and freedoms?" asked writer Alheli Picazo. "Women and girls who become pregnant through rape/incest."
University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick said that one could test "empirically" Vance's claim that Democratic policies are anti-family.
"But I haven't heard the GOP talk much about things that would help my family and my kids," she said, "like reducing childcare and tuition costs."
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