Business Insider/Jessica Tyler
- Hundreds of people have taken to social media to urge boycotts of Amazon during Prime Day.
- These people are urging consumers not to shop Prime Day deals and to show solidarity with the thousands of workers who are protesting for better pay and improved working conditions over the next two days.
- Amazon warehouses’ working conditions have come under increased scrutiny in recent years as employees race to meet the company’s promises for speedy shipping.
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Amazon Prime Day is underway, and the company’s critics are out in full force.
Hundreds of people have taken to social media to say they are boycotting the company and to urge others to do the same in order to show solidarity with the thousands of workers who are striking across the US and Europe over the next two days. These workers are protesting for better pay and improved working conditions.
Read more: Thousands of Amazon workers across Europe and the US are striking and protesting on Prime Day
For some consumers, Amazon has increasingly become a symbol of everything that is wrong with big corporations in the US — an image that has historically been associated with Walmart. This has intensified in recent years as Amazon has grown and spread its influence into new areas of business.
The backlash is mainly centered around workers’ rights. Amazon has come under increased scrutiny for the working conditions at its warehouses as employees race to meet the e-commerce giant’s promises for speedy shipping, especially during the holidays and other busy shopping periods.
But despite calls for boycotts over Black Friday and Prime Day in 2018, Amazon has extended it Prime Day shopping extravaganza to two days for the first time ever this year.
"By doubling Prime Day’s duration and halving the delivery time, the company is testing hundreds of thousands of workers’ physical limits as though they were trained triathletes," Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which is involved in the European strikes, said in a statement to the press on Monday.
In a statement emailed to Business Insider on Monday an Amazon spokesperson said that the unions leading the protests in Europe are "conjuring misinformation" and that Amazon offers "industry-leading pay, benefits, and a safe workplace."
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SEE ALSO: Thousands of Amazon workers across Europe and the US are striking and protesting on Prime Day
Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Mary Hanbury)