But being essential to society brings new scrutiny, and the health crisis has increased attention on every aspect of the company’s business model, both in D.C. and in fights with regulators in Europe.
That gives Amazon’s critics fresh fodder to get the changes they demand, said Neil Chilson, a senior research fellow at the Charles Koch Institute and former acting chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission.
“It gives some bargaining power to those who are trying to raise labor concerns or trying to negotiate something different from the company,” said Chilson, who resists calls for sweeping new regulations of the tech giant.
While progressive critics have long gone after Amazon about its pay, working conditions and tax rates, employees are now accusing the company of failing to enact adequate virus safety protocols at its warehouses and of dismissing several employees who have spoken out about unsafe working conditions. The company says it dismissed them for violating safety and other protocols, not for speaking out.
Amazon has responded by pointing to new steps it has implemented during the pandemic, including doing deep cleaning at its warehouses and shipping centers, providing protective gear to workers and introducing new social distancing guidelines. The company declined to offer additional comment for this story.
But congressional Democrats say the disease has only made the company’s labor flaws more glaring.
“Amazon has always had a poor worker safety record, but it has become even clearer during this pandemic that it needs to shape up,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who along with four other Democratic senators grilled Amazon in a letter last month on its efforts to safeguard workers and protect whistleblowers during the Covid-19 outbreak.
“Amazon continues to put the lives of their own workers at risk” and is retaliating against those who speak out, said Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, where Amazon fired a worker who had helped organize protests. „My concerns about the company have only heightened as this pandemic has progressed,” she said.
Momentum is building among congressional Democrats to include worker protections in coronavirus relief. Nine senators and more than 40 House members issued a letter last week urging congressional leadership to include an “essential worker bill of rights” proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna in the next round of aid.
While Republicans have not joined the cry for more mandated worker protections, they have started to express qualms about the way the company deals with sellers on its platform.
As American consumers flock to Amazon for products from hand sanitizer to jigsaw puzzles, the company has also faced increased attention on how it chooses which items it declares essential and how it weeds out counterfeits. Amazon Prime customers used to two-day shipping of all products have had to readjust expectations, while outside retailers have accused Amazon of undercutting their business and sometimes posting longer-than-actual shipping times in order to dissuade orders. Meanwhile, negative reviews on Amazon complain about masks that are not the material or quality advertised.
On Wednesday, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative included a number of Amazon’s websites in foreign countries in its annual list of “notorious markets” for counterfeit foreign goods, the first time a U.S. company’s overseas operations have been listed. The move — long advocated for by clothing and shoe manufacturers — does not carry any penalty but is a slap in the face for the retailer from the executive branch, and a more concrete one than President Donald Trump’s regular pronouncements against the company.
In the U.S., allegations that Amazon is misusing data from third-party sellers is intensifying the company’s antitrust woes.
Friday’s demand from the Judiciary Committee came after a Wall Street Journal report last week said the company used data it collects from sellers to launch competing products, a practice it had told Congress it did not engage in. It echoed a call by Warren on Wednesday, soon after the Journal report, for Bezos to testify.
“We have to make sure big guys like Amazon can’t use this opportunity to take further advantage of smaller businesses struggling to survive while the giants rake in no-strings attached bailout money,” Warren told POLITICO.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), another of tech’s loudest detractors in Washington, urged the Justice Department this week to launch an antitrust probe of Amazon. European regulators are already investigating the company on allegations of similar data misuse in the EU.
Others who had not previously been vocal critics of Amazon’s market dominance have started to join in the censure. One key example — Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a member of the hard-line conservative Freedom Caucus.
„As much as I am someone who advocates that the markets correct themselves, I think it’s something that Congress needs to address and update our laws so that the regulators have the tools they need to make sure that that kind of conduct doesn’t continue,“ Buck said of the alleged misuse of seller data.
Buck sits on the House Judiciary Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, which has been conducting a yearlong investigation into possible anti-competitive conduct in the tech sector that has increasingly zeroed in on Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple. He said he wasn’t initially a total “believer” in the probe, but he’s come around to view it as critical.
He joined fellow committee Republican Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in signing Friday’s letter demanding that Bezos testify, along with Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and other committee Democrats.
Buck said “support is growing” among Republicans for legislation to modernize antitrust laws and boost federal enforcers’ ability to crack down on such practices by Amazon and other tech giants, even among his colleagues on the Freedom Caucus.
Other Republicans are seemingly balancing a desire to hold Amazon accountable against a wish to distance themselves from trust-busting lawmakers like Warren. The House Judiciary Committee’s top Republican, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, did not sign onto Friday’s demand for Bezos to testify. Russell Dye, a Republican committee spokesperson for Jordan, suggested the Democratic authors of the letter want to break up Amazon “simply because they are a large successful business.”
However, Dye also said committee Republicans “have questions for Amazon and want to get answers for the American people.”
Trump has even used the Covid-19 crisis to renew his unsubstantiated accusations that the Postal Service is posting annual losses because Amazon has forced it into predatory contracts. Trump said last week that if the agency doesn’t raise prices on the e-commerce giant, the government may as well „let Amazon build their own Post Office.“
Amazon, which has long used the Postal Service for the last leg of delivery for many packages, has already been building out its own delivery infrastructure to take on more of this work itself.
But that’s one Amazon proposal that’s not picking up bipartisan steam, even in an increasingly critical Washington. “Not only would raising prices on these ‘last mile’ delivery services hurt families, small businesses, and our ability to respond to the coronavirus in rural communities, it could exacerbate the Postal Service’s financial problem,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.).
Source: politico.com
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