Tag: amazon sweatshop lehigh valley

The $9 Million Amazon Boycott and Priceless Found Irony

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment
An Amazon box on top of a box from the once globally famous, now defunct iconic Allentown retail brand. Found irony.

Speaking of the New Generative Economy (see previous post), donating clean water, trees, construction funds or socks (or buying fair trade items at local stores) works another kind of grace: it takes business away from companies who produce things in unjust conditions overseas and companies who package and ship them in unjust conditions right here in Pennsylvania.  Spencer Soper, the journalist who first broke the Amazon news, reports that almost 13,000 people have signed an online pledge to boycott Amazon via DC-based advocacy group American Rights at Work.

Soper’s new piece notes that 13,ooo people might equate to something like $9 million in sales.  Even if that’s only a drop in Amazon’s global bucket, imagine what that same $9 million could do, even when broken into pieces, for fair trade retailers and generative charities.

Here’ s the ARW open letter to Jeff Bezos, which you can sign and send online.

Related articles

Kindle Fire an Aptly Named Product (Yes, This is About Amazon’s Deplorable Working Conditions in the Lehigh Valley)

~ Chris Cocca ~ 7 Comments

Twitter is just ablaze (see what I did there?) with news about Amazon’s new Kindle Fire.  It’s touch. It’s cheap. It slices and dices and makes three different (pizza slice falls on Master Splinter’s head.  I never did have resolution about that).

The Kindle Fire by Amazon.  The must-have gift this Christmas.  The incredible price point of $199.  Made possible, of course, because Amazon runs facilities like those in Breinigsville, Lehigh Valley, PA, where conditions over the summer were so unsafe that Amazon used the local ambulance corps. as a concierge service.  “Well, you know, it was hot this summer,” says Amazon.  Then why weren’t the same dangerous conditions observed at any of the many other warehouses in within a stone’s throw of Amazon’s facilities? Curiouser and curiouser.

The Kindle Fire: Because Our Warehouses Are Hot as Hell!

The Kindle Fire: Because That’s What We Do To Temps and Employees Who Use Heat-Induced Sick Days!

The Kindle Fire: So Cheap, We’re Hoping You Ignore our Human Rights and Safety Violations!

The Kindle Fire: Give the Gift of Worker Abuse This Christmas!