Amazon goes on the offensive against prominent lawmakers in the most important union action in the history of the online retailer. Amazon’s official PR Twitter account, @amazonnews, on Friday slammed Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for their continued criticism of the e-commerce company.
“There’s a big difference between talking and action,” Amazon tweeted. “@SenSanders has been a powerful Vermont politician for 30 years and their minimum wage is still $ 11.75. Amazon’s is $ 15, plus excellent health care from day one. Sanders would rather talk in Alabama than perform in Vermont.”
Amazon also retweeted a comment from Dave Clark, the company’s global CEO, who said Sanders should “keep his wagging reading until he actually delivers in his own backyard.”
Sanders, an independent in Congress who is often allies of Democrats, was in Bessemer, Alabama, on Friday to lend support to Amazon workers campaigning for the right to join a union. Factory employees are now voting in the mail-in election, with the vote ending on March 29.
During the meeting, Sanders spoke directly to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, accusing the world’s richest man of losing touch with his employees.
Why, when you have so much money – more money than can be spent in a million lives – why spend millions to beat the effort of the workers here who want nothing more than decent wages, decent benefits, decent work? ? ” Sanders said.
Amazon also got confused Friday with Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who earlier this week accused the company of abusing tax loopholes.
Amazon replied, ‘You make the tax laws @SenWarrenWe just follow them. If you don’t like the laws you’ve made, by all means change them. ”
Warren replied, “I have not written the loopholes that you exploit – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists have.” She added, “You bet I’ll fight to make you pay your fair share. And fight your union breakdown. And fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to bother senators with snotty tweets. ‘
Amazon responded by characterizing Warren’s comments as a personal attack on the company. This is extraordinary and revealing. One of the most powerful politicians in the United States just said she’s going to break up an American company so they can’t criticize her anymore. ‘
Amazon has told federal regulators that it paid $ 1.8 billion in federal taxes in 2020 – that’s 15 times the tax it paid in the previous two years and about 8% of the $ 22 billion in profit the company made last year.
The company is also grappling with congressmen. Mark Pocan, who represents Wisconsin’s Second District, tweeted on Amazon this week that a $ 15 wage alone didn’t make it a good place to work “if you dissolve unions and let workers pee in water bottles.”
Pocan was referring to many reported accounts of Amazon drivers and warehouse workers who had so little time for breaks that they were forced to relieve themselves in empty bottles or in public.
Amazon denied the charge: “You don’t really believe peeing in bottles is a thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us,” the company tweeted.
Users on Twitter responded with news accounts of Amazon employees complaining about inhumane working conditions. Even Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighed in. The New York house member tweeted a screenshot of an email in which an Amazon manager complained about “bottles of urine” left in vans.