hatsinspace:

justalurkr:

What to know about the Amazon strike planned for Black Friday – ABC News

What to know about the Amazon strike planned for Black Friday

If you still shop on Amazon: don’t cross the picket line. No cash to amazon.com between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Don’t @ me about deals. You know there will be deals after Monday and right through Christmas.

Hey here’s a good time to employ SIFT!! Because here’s a big claim: that you should boycott Amazon this weekend.

STOP

What do we already know about this source and topic?

• In the past handful of years, lots of folks have been trying to start unions at Amazon
• There have been a lot of reports of horrid working conditions at Amazon
• Amazon makes an obscene amount of money
• ABC News in the US is probably a pretty reliable source, but like all news outlets, is biased – at a minimum, we can be pretty sure they will “both sides” shit.
• Boycotts can be an effective method of forcing change, when used correctly.
• A lot of times, workers don’t call for one, because NOT boycotting actually can put more pressure on companies.

Notably, there is no mention in the article of a planned or asked-for boycott of Amazon this weekend.

INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE

In the ABC News article linked in the OP, a press release from one of the coalition members is linked.

It’s from UNI Global Union, and a person identified as the general secretary of UNI Global Union is also quoted in the ABC News article.

UNI Global Union is headquartered in Switzerland, and was formed via the merger of four other unions.

It appears that they do actually do things they mention on their website – here’s a copy of their agreement with BNP Paribas on the BNP Paribas site.

They most likely have a good idea of what the plans for this weekend are, and look to have some experience in union organizing. The general secretary has also contributed to the World Economic Forum.

Tumblr user justalurkr, from whom the OP comes, is anonymous. Their recent TL is a mix of memes, rbs, fandom stuff, and a few personal posts mixed in. No mention that they are involved in this action in any way.

FIND BETTER COVERAGE

Neither the press release from UNI Global Union nor the quote mention a boycott.

UNI Global Union’s website has information about the organization and work they say they’ve done around the world. There’s also a link to a website for the Make Amazon Pay campaign, identified as the action taking place this weekend.

The Make Amazon Pay site links to a bunch of orgs it says are participating. There’s also a link to a giant ZIP file of campaign materials.

The Make Amazon Pay site does not mention a boycott. I’ve perused about a quarter of the ZIP file and nothing in there mentions a boycott.

I browsed articles from NBC News, the New York Post (which I don’t usually trust but could be interesting to see if they say something different), Business Insider, and the Peace & Justice Project in the UK. None of them mention a boycott.

TRACE CLAIMS TO THE ORIGINAL CONTEXT

So the “you need to boycott” claim doesn’t seem to be coming from the organizers of Make Amazon Pay.

“Amazon boycott” yields me a bunch of articles from October 2024 mentioning calls to boycott Amazon after the Washington Post’s presidential candidate endorsement mess.

“Don’t cross the picket line”, in its original context, is telling people to not be scabs, aka strikebreakers. In other words, if a company’s workers are on strike, don’t go work for that company.

Regarding whether customers can cross a picket line, well, there’s actually laws about this! The University of Maine’s Bureau of Labor Education has a little write up. In short, workers can ask customers not to patronize the business they are striking, but they can’t intimidate customers, lie about the company, etc.

A recent example of workers asking customers to not cross a picket line in a digital space happened in November of 2024, when the New York Times Tech Guild struck and asked readers to not play NYT Games during the action.

So the ask has been made in the past to not cross digital picket lines – but there’s no evidence it has been made by workers as a part of Make Amazon Pay, at least not in the US.

Workers have in the past asked for boycotts, or other organizations have organized them, but again, this post is the only place I have seen calling for a boycott against Amazon this weekend, or for consumers to not cross a picket line. The striking workers, as far as i can tell, have NOT asked for this.