Fundamentally, the labor movement is about creating a world in which all of us can live well and have our needs met. But as long as fascism is on the rise, that vision will be out of reach.
To stop fascism, we first must dismantle the corporate tech apparatus at its center. That’s why all of this year’s nominees for Corporate Accountability’s Corporate Hall of Shame are Big Tech giants that have made headlines by fueling, propping up, and profiting from the rise of fascism in the U.S.
Also on the ballot: OpenAI, Meta, Palantir, and Oracle. All fantastic candidates for the Corporate Hall of Shame. But we think Amazon is the worst of the worst, and therefore the most deserving of this win. Here’s why:
Amazon powers ICE. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more.
And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases, analyze and store this data on Amazon Web Services. [1]
The information stored by DHS on AWS is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities. With tens of millions of dollars in contracts with DHS, Amazon is making bank off of detaining and deporting our loved ones.
And that’s just one example. The truth is, Amazon is everywhere. The tentacles of its corporate greed reach into every facet of our lives, whether we work or shop there or not.
Amazon uses its technology to not only power ICE, but to control its workers. Employees at Amazon aren’t managed so much as surveilled, with inhumane, algorithm-driven productivity standards that push workers past capacity.
These productivity quotas are heartless. Earlier this year, after an Oregon worker collapsed and died on the job, his co-workers were told to look away and keep working around his body. [2]
And when it comes to unions, Amazon’s union-busting tactics are infamous, with the company spending thousands of dollars per day on anti-union consultants and rolling out an Orwellian-level propaganda machine in warehouses where workers attempt to organize.[3]
In Solidarity,
The Labor Force
[1]https://www.immigrantdefenseproject.org/wp-content/uploads/How-Amazon-Powers-ICEs-Deportation-Machine.pdf
[2]https://www.thewesternedge.media/p/everyone-is-replaceable-death-rattles
[3]https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/amazon-union-busting-north-carolina/