SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
black friday
Global Black Friday Strikes Against Amazon Target 'Techno-Authoritarian' Assault on Workers
"We are joining Make Amazon Pay to demand the most basic rights: safety, dignity, and the chance to go home alive," said one Amazon worker from India.
Nov 28, 2025
Amazon workers and their allies worldwide took to the streets on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, to protest the e-commerce behemoth's exploitation of workers, relentless union-busting, contributions to the worsening climate emergency, and plans to replace employees en masse with robots.
“Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and their political allies are betting on a techno-authoritarian future, but this Make Amazon Pay Day, workers everywhere are saying: enough,” said Christy Hoffman, general secretary of UNI Global Union. “For years, Amazon has squashed workers’ right to democracy on the job through a union and the backing of authoritarian political figures. Its model is deepening inequality and undermining the fundamental rights of workers to organize, bargain collectively, and demand safe, fair workplaces.”
From Germany to Bangladesh, thousands of workers walked off the job on Friday and marched against Amazon's labor practices to push for better wages, working conditions, and union protections. Last month, Amazon reported over $21 billion in profits for the third quarter of 2025—a 38% increase compared to the same time last year.
“During the heatwaves, the warehouse feels like a furnace—people faint, but the targets never stop,” said Neha Singh, an Amazon worker in Manesar, India, referring to the company's productivity quotas. "Even if we fainted, we couldn’t take a day off and go home. If we took that day off, our pay would be cut, and if we took three days off, they would fire us. Amazon treats us as expendable."
"We are joining Make Amazon Pay," said Singh, "to demand the most basic rights: safety, dignity, and the chance to go home alive.”
HAPPENING NOW 🌎 Amazon workers and their allies in 38 countries around the world are striking and protesting to #MakeAmazonPay. pic.twitter.com/srMRsymCh7
— Progressive International (@ProgIntl) November 28, 2025
Make Amazon Pay is an alliance of labor unions and advocacy groups organizing to stop Amazon from "squeezing workers, communities and the planet."
The 2025 strikes and protests, which organizers described as the largest mobilization against Amazon to date, mark the sixth consecutive year of global actions organized by the coalition.
The strike in Germany was characterized as the largest in Amazon's history, with around 3,000 workers expected to join picket lines across the country. The union representing Amazon workers in the United States voiced solidarity with striking German workers in a social media post on Friday, crediting them with "inspiring the global Amazon worker movement for over a decade."
Amazon Teamsters stand in solidarity with our German Amazon colleagues today as you engage in courageous strike action. To the long-time strikers - you’ve been inspiring the global Amazon worker movement for over a decade. To those who are joining the growing movement for the… pic.twitter.com/42ul1bbFb5
— Amazon Teamsters (@amazonteamsters) November 28, 2025
"Across the world, Amazon workers are walking off the job, marching through their cities, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with communities to demand what every worker deserves: fair wages, safe conditions, the right to organize—and a future not dictated by algorithms and billionaires," Progressive International, a member of the alliance, said Friday.
"But the target is not only a company. It is the emerging system that Amazon now anchors: a techno-authoritarian order that fuses the power of Big Tech with the prerogatives of the far right—from Trump’s ICE raids to Israel’s genocide in Gaza," the group added. "This week's actions point toward another horizon. One in which supply chains become sites of struggle, not submission; where warehouse workers link arms with tech workers, garment workers, Indigenous communities, and migrants; where a global labor movement is capable of confronting a global system of power."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Ahead of Black Friday, Report Reveals Attacks on Garment Workers' Right to Organize
The fashion industry has thrived for decades while "failing to ensure that the right of garment workers to unionize and collectively bargain is respected."
Nov 27, 2025
With clothing companies that will be offering discounted Black Friday deals this week relying heavily on the labor of tens of millions underpaid and overworked garment workers across the Global South, two reports by the human rights group Amnesty International make the case that ensuring these employees are afforded the right to organize their workplaces is key to ending worker exploitation across the fashion industry.
The organization interviewed 64 garment workers in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan from 2023-24, including 12 union organizers and labor rights activists, for its report titled Stitched Up, about the denial of freedom of association for workers in the four countries.
Two-thirds of the workers Amnesty interviewed were women, reflecting the fact that the garment workforce is mainly female, and many described the long hours, poverty wages, and abusive working conditions that the industry is known for.
But beyond that, the workers told Amnesty about the "climate of fear" they work in, with all but two of the 13 workers in Bangladesh reporting they had faced threats of retaliation at work if they joined or tried to form a union.
More than two dozen union organizers in the four countries described harassment, dismissal, and threats that they and their colleagues had faced for organizing their workplace.
“When workers raise their voices, they are ignored. When they try to organize, they are threatened and sacked. And finally, when workers protest, they are beaten, shot at, and arrested,” said a labor rights activist identified as Taufiq in Bangladesh.
The report notes that "restrictions on the right of workers to organize into trade unions and collectively speak out against human rights abuses at work are a violation of the fundamental right to freedom of association and collective bargaining," which are affirmed by the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said that "an unholy alliance of fashion brands, factory owners, and the governments of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka is propping up an industry known for its endemic human rights abuses" and allowing mistreatment of workers to continue while barring employees from working together to fight for better conditions and pay.
"By failing to ensure that the right of garment workers to unionize and collectively bargain is respected, the industry has thrived for decades on the exploitation of a grossly underpaid, overworked, and mostly female workforce,” said Callamard.
The governments of the four countries have failed to provide a living wage to garment workers—instead competing to attract the investment of clothing companies by setting the lowest wages possible. Almost all of the workers interviewed by Amnesty said their wages did not cover their families' living costs.
Many of the workers also reported that they were hired with "informal" work contracts, with no formal mechanisms for reporting workplace abuses, including violence and sexual harassment.
“I was touched physically and abused verbally. No one in management would listen to my complaints then I asked other women to organize. I was threatened with dismissal many times,” Sumaayaa, a worker and organizer from Lahore, Pakistan, told Amnesty.
The governments in question have done nothing to counter such precarious working arrangements, with officials establishing "Special Economic Zones" (SEZ) in Bangladesh and "Free Trade Zones" in Sri Lanka—areas where administrative measures place "often insurmountable barriers against union communication and access to workers."
Instead of affording workers the right to freedom of association in SEZ's, officials in Bangladesh encourage workers to form "welfare associations or committees, which have limited ability to collectively organize."
Alongside Stitched Up, Amnesty released the companion report Abandoned by Fashion: The Urgent Need for Fashion Brands to Champion Workers’ Rights, which details top brands' responses to an international survey on the rights of garment workers to organize their workplaces.
All of the fashion brands and retailers surveyed, including Adidas, ASOS, Shein, PVH, and Marks and Spencer, had "codes of conduct for suppliers, human rights policies, or principles, which affirmed the company’s commitment to workers’ right to freedom of association."
But the survey revealed "a limited commitment to implementing these policies at the factory level, especially in proactively promoting union organizing and ensuring human rights commitments and the ability of workers to exercise this right were reflected in their choice of sourcing location."
Amnesty found very few independent trade unions operating within the companies' supply chains in the four countries.
Adidas reported that 9.5% of its suppliers in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan have unions. H&M works with 145 factories in Bangladesh, 29 of which had trade unions. Of 31 factories in Bangladesh, none had unions, and eight out of 93 facilities in India had them.
In the case of the clothing company Next, just 23 of the 167 apparel factories the company works with in Bangladesh had independent unions, while 134 had less empowered "committees."
"These findings provide a very stark indication of the low levels of unionization within the supply chains of major fashion companies in South Asia," reads the report. "They reveal the impact of the failures of the governments of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to protect and promote garment workers’ rights in relation to the right to freedom of association. Our research shows how all four states have effectively denied this right to garment workers, including by creating disproportionate or arbitrary barriers to registration, unionization, and strike action, and by failing in their responsibility to protect workers, union members, and officials from corporate abuse including discrimination, harassment, and dismissal."
Amnesty International made a number of recommendations to fashion companies, including:
- Building an ethical sourcing strategy that rewards genuine freedom of association, penalizes its denial, and prohibits retaliation against unions—at the supplier level but also when taking sourcing decisions across the whole supply chain;
- Working with independent local trade unions to concretely strengthen worker organizing through, for example, making public commitments locally alongside practical support and engagement with suppliers;
- Ensuring that policies, paper commitments, and codes of conduct on freedom of association and collective bargaining are practically implemented, with time-bound progress monitored and made public, providing examples of good practice; and
- Publicly supporting worker movements and trade unions, in the supply chain but also those directly employed, in their struggles around wages, working conditions, and the fight against union busting.
Callamard said that "the economic success of the garment industry must come hand-in-hand with the realization of workers’ rights."
“The need of the hour is to build a human rights-respecting sourcing strategy for the global garment industry," she said. "Freedom of association is key to tackling the abuse of workers’ rights. It must be protected, advanced, and championed.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Black Friday Actions in 30+ Countries Aim to 'Make Amazon Pay'
"When we announced our intention to protest today, our management attempted to stop us in multiple ways. We want to say to Amazon—you could not stop us today, you cannot stop us in the future," said one union leader.
Nov 29, 2024
Amazon workers and their allies are participating in a series of global actions aimed at holding the online retailer "accountable for labor abuses, environmental degradation, and threats to democracy," according to the labor group UNI Global Union.
Dubbed "Make Amazon Pay," the campaign is set to last from November 29 to December 2 and will include strikes and protests across six continents, according to the group—and is timed to disrupt Black Friday (or "Make Amazon Pay Day") and Cyber Monday, two of the busiest online shopping days of the year.
"When we announced our intention to protest today, our management attempted to stop us in multiple ways. We want to say to Amazon—you could not stop us today, you cannot stop us in the future," said the general secretary of the Amazon India Workers Union during a demonstration held in India on Friday.
Make Amazon Pay Day was launched in 2020 by UNI Global Union and the left-leaning movement group Progressive International. It has expanded each subsequent year, say organizers, and today the coalition behind Make Amazon Pay Day brings together a wide range of groups, including climate, racial, and economic justice organizations.
According to Progressive International, actions taking place as part of the campaign include but are not limited to: strikes at multiple warehouses in Germany; direct actions in French towns and cities led by the justice group Attac; a rally in India by Amazon workers over unsafe working conditions; and a protest by trade unionists at an Amazon call center. All told, actions are supposed to take place in over 30 countries.
"This fight is global. Every picket, every strike, every action of solidarity matters. Another world is possible, and we are building that world one strike, one conversation at a time. Together, we are unstoppable," said Christy Hoffman, UNI Global Union's general secretary, on Friday while speaking to striking workers in Germany.
The campaign alleges that Amazon "squeezes" workers, communities, and the planet. For example, "while tripling profits in early 2024, Amazon surveils and pressures drivers and warehouse workers at the risk of severe physical and mental harm," according to campaign materials.
Responding to the campaign, an Amazon U.S. spokesperson told Newsweek: "The fact is at Amazon we provide great pay, great benefits, and great opportunities—all from day one. We've created more than 1.5 million jobs around the world, and counting, and we provide a modern, safe, and engaging workplace whether you work in an office or at one of our operations buildings."
Online, progressive political figures lent their support to the effort.
"Today, I stand with Amazon workers in over 30 countries around the world striking and protesting to #MakeAmazonPay," wrote Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the British Labour Party.
"While billionaire Bezos tours the world on his $500m yacht, Amazon workers in 20+ countries are rising up this Black Friday to demand fair wages, union rights, and climate action. Amazon must pay its fair share and respect workers. I stand with #MakeAmazonPay," chimed in U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on X.
Following the inaugural Make Amazon Pay campaign in 2020, hundreds of lawmakers from dozens of countries endorsed the effort with an open letter to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
"The world knows that Amazon can afford to pay its workers, its environmental cost, and its taxes. And yet—time and again—you have dodged and dismissed your debts to workers, societies, and the planet," the letter alleged. U.S. signatories included Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular