Five campaigns fighting Amazon | Ethical Consumer (2024)

Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world – with one study saying that over 85% of people in the UK use the online giant.

But the company faces massive opposition from communities and campaigners around the world. It has been accused of everything from racism in its AI technology to massive greenwashing of its climate harms.

Five campaigns against Amazon

Here, we spotlight five amazing campaigns that are building pressure against Amazon.

1. Make Amazon Pay

The Make Amazon Pay coalition unites a broad range of unions and civil society organisations worldwide, including Greenpeace, Tax Justice Network, Amazon Workers International and Ethical Consumer among many more.

It’s especially active during Black Friday, encouraging people to boycott Amazon during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

In 2021 it organised coordinated protests and solidarity actions across Amazon’s transcontinental supply chain – fast becoming an annual campaign every Black Friday. For the first time, large numbers of workers in multiple countries simultaneously held strikes.

To support the campaign, you can download Make Amazon Pay’s toolkit, which contains lots of shareable resources from social media images to leaflets.

2. Action on Amazon (Unite)

Action on Amazon is a coalition formed by Unite the Union. It collaborates with Amazon workers to get them a better deal, including a union and a voice on the job.

The campaign calls for Amazon to step back from its aggressively anti-union stance. Amazon warehouse workers report being fired and threatened with redundancy for attempting to unionise.

3. GMB Union

The major UK union GMB (which stands for General and Municipal Workers' Union) has been campaigning against Amazon since 2013. It’s calling for better working conditions and fair pay.

The union has supported Amazon workers to strike across the UK, projected “Make Amazon Pay” onto the wall of Amazon’s London headquarters, and called for an urgent UK Parliamentary enquiry into Amazon during Covid-19.

4. Athena

Athena is a coalition of more than 50 member organisations based in the United States – uniting over a million workers, communities and activists fighting the company.

Athena members have helped protect workers’ jobs, trained warehouse staff in their injury protection rights, raised issues about pay and surveillance at Amazon annual general meetings, and protested Amazon’s environmental harms.

It says that taking on Amazon can empower us to:

• Govern our own communities
• Put our health before Amazon's bottom line
• Shield local economies, so they can thrive
• And protect people from Amazon's dangerous surveillance.

5. Amazon Employees for Climate Justice

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice group has been calling on Amazon to improve its approach to climate change. The group has held protests, filed shareholder resolutions calling on the company to reduce its fossil fuel dependency, and organised mass walkouts.

The group says that their employer is failing to live up to its stated commitments when it comes to carbon management.

Do campaigns against Amazon have impact?

Some of these movements have seen major success.

In 2019, New York activists successfully drove Amazon away from the city where it had planned to build an HQ2 in return for almost $3 million in tax deals.

In 2017, Amazon was ordered to repay €250 million in tax by the EU – although it successfully appealed the fine earlier in 2021.

In May 2021, the European Parliament challenged Jeff Bezos over Amazon’s union-busting and spying on workers. In March 2021, Bezos confessed, "we need to do a better job for Amazon employees.”

And recently in July 2023, Amazon had to pay $25m over violating children’s privacy law through its Alexa device.