On this edition of Your Call, we discuss Amazon’s empire. Global sales were nearly $150 billion in the fourth quarter of last year. Fifty to seventy percent of online retail sales are made through Amazon.
In the US, Amazon owns 110 warehouses and employs more than one million people. After years of organizing and speaking out about a number of abusive practices, including the use of surveillance technology to monitor their productivity, workers still say they are disposable.
Amazon's Web Services is the largest provider of cloud computing in the world by market share, according to Built In. It also owns MGM and One Medical. The company says Amazon Clinic will operate in 32 states and Amazon Pharmacy will deliver medications to your front door in just two days.
The Open Markets Institute says Amazon's web of control must be broken.
Guests:
Stacy Mitchell, co-executive director of the Institute for Local Self Reliance
Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the Open Markets Institute
Web Resources:
The New Republic: The Shadow Empire That Fuels Amazon’s Dominance
Marketplace:Amazon Takes a 50% Cut of Seller's Revenue
The Guardian: ‘They’re more concerned about profit’: Osha, DoJ take on Amazon’s grueling working conditions
Institute for Local Self Reliance: How Amazon Exploits and Undermines Small Businesses, and Why Breaking It Up Would Revive American Entrepreneurship
BBC: California says Amazon's dominance drives up online prices
Oceana: Exposed: Amazon’s enormous and rapidly growing plastic pollution problem
