Words by Tamara El-Halawani
Amazon has pledged to $150 million to support small Black-owned businesses across America – but given the company’s patchy diversity record and history of employee mistreatment, is this just another opportunistic ride on the back of the Black Lives Matter movement?
Last May, Amazon released a statement saying that the company stood ‘in solidarity with the Black community’ after the murder of George Floyd. To many, this echoed as empty as the black squares that painted our social media feeds in June. Classed as virtue signalling or acting out of self-interest, cries of ‘open your purse’ and ‘put your money where your mouth is’ poured onto Twitter. Consumers pressured corporations and their CEOs to support their lofty rhetoric with definitive change; millennial beauty favourite Glossier pledged $1 million to ‘organisations combating racial injustice’ and to support small Black-owned businesses in beauty, despite the company being in its infancy. Others quickly followed suit; words translated into affirmative action.
This June, Amazon announced that it was committing $150 million to small Black-owned businesses as part of its Black Business Accelerator (BBA) Initiative over the next four years. The programme seeks to provide ‘access to capital, business guidance, mentorship and marketing support’ to help Black business owners maximise their selling potential on the platform. It was founded by the company, its Black Employee Network and a coalition of strategic partners.
Currently, the US population consists of 14% Black Americans, yet only 6% of U.S. retail businesses have a Black owner. Coupled with this, the pandemic has brought racial injustice and inequity to light and Black-owned businesses have been disproportionately affected; between February and April 2020, Black business ownership rates dropped 41%, while a 17% drop was recorded by their white business counterparts. To alleviate this, Amazon aims to invest the money into these businesses so that they can share in the successes of other third party sellers on the site – which contributed to the company’s 50% year-on-year growth in worldwide sales in 2020.
While the investment is undoubtedly a win, Amazon notoriously treats its employees poorly, which comes as a cost of being ‘obsessed’ with its customer base. For example, software by automated management detects the rate at which those working in warehouses process a certain number of items per hour. If an employee fails to meet their rate, they may be automatically fired. Employees have been told to urinate in bottles, walk as far as 17 miles per shift and those who are pregnant have had to stand for 10 hours while working. Additionally, a report in 2018 revealed that more than 600 serious health and safety incidents were reported at its warehouses. Those working in these conditions are more likely to be Black; of the 26.5% Black employees at Amazon in 2020, 31% of those work in warehouses and call centre jobs, and 3.8% in senior management and executive positions. Comparatively, of the 38.4% of white people employed at all levels, 28.5% are warehouse and call centre workers but 70.7% are senior managers and executives. Black people are more likely to be dehumanised and exploited within the company, throwing into question the genuineness of investments like that of the BBA. Are these examples of performative activism, an opportunistic ride on the back of the Black Lives Matter movement?
Amazon has faced previous accusations for treating workers unfairly. Charlotte Newman, a Black Amazon senior manager, recently sued the company for alleged race and gender discrimination, sexual harassment and assault. She also reported that she was hired at a lower level than she had applied for, a practice that Amazon employees call ‘down-levelling’. Internal data has informed the disparities between Black employees and their non-Black peers in Amazon’s review and promotion systems. An article published by Recode showed that Black employees obtained ‘less effective’ marks and were promoted at lower rates, too.
Chris Smalls, who had worked in an Amazon warehouse for five years, was fired shortly after organising a walk out over insufficient protective equipment and hazard pay for workers against coronavirus. In a letter written in The Guardian to Jeff Bezos, Smalls described how Amazon saw its workers as ‘expendable’. As he noticed more people becoming sick and reported it to HR, they told them that they were ‘following CDC guidelines’, yet there were no masks and limited hand sanitiser and cleaning supplies. He was allowed to take paid time off to avoid getting sick and returned to work when he could no longer afford to do so. However, those around him with underlying health conditions who had done the same were not so fortunate. Imposed mandatory overtime was branded as ‘blood money’; for an extra $2 an hour, employees had to work additional hours to keep up with online demand and came to work ‘as sick as dogs’. His dismissal was claimed to be caused by his refusal to quarantine at home for 145 days after coming into close contact with an infected colleague. However, Smalls claims he was not sent home until three weeks after his exposure. He was later pronounced ‘not smart or articulate’ by Amazon executives in leaked PR notes from a meeting with Jeff Bezos.
In America, the company has commercial partnerships with law enforcement, supplying them with technologies that target and harm communities of colour. The facial recognition software ‘Rekognition’ was sold to police forces to be used alongside police body cameras. In a 2018 experiment, the ACLU found that the software misidentified 28 members of Congress as people arrested for a crime. These members were predominantly non-white. Black and brown people were also more likely to be surveilled by the Amazon subsidiary Ring, a smart doorbell company for ‘suspicious’ activity, potentially generating a community-wide network that spurred racial anxiety. Products like these allow Amazon to profit from, and reinforce, systemic racism in America.
Amazon maintains a foothold in almost every aspect of our lives. From entertainment, e-commerce and artificial intelligence to cloud computing, digital streaming and self-driving cars, its reach stretches far beyond the borders of America. With this comes the power to influence millions in making it unthinkable to live without their products. As the second largest private sector employer in the U.S., how Amazon treats its workers sets an example globally. It is in their economic interest to speak up and exploit social movements, given that millennials are more engaged with socially conscious brands and this is the rising demographic employed in the company.
For a company that embraces being ‘divinely discontent’, constantly improving the customer experience and its performance, Amazon has the platform to be better than any other in demonstrating its commitment to caring about Black lives. If it was looking for the best possible PR stunt, perhaps admitting its internal failures first before reaching farther afield would have been the better strategy. That way, perhaps it wouldn’t be silently and unknowingly admitting its hypocrisy.
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