Daniel Kopp and Oliver Roethig of UNI Europa, the European Services Workers Union, reflect on a transnational campaign to limit the power of big capital.
With a net worth of 200 billion USD, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has just become the richest man in the world again – a position he held after Amazon’s explosive growth during the Covid-19 pandemic, and then temporarily lost to Elon Musk. Bezos’ astronomical wealth – which is higher than the GDP of two-thirds of the world’s countries – reflects Amazon’s status as one of the most powerful companies in the world.
Having taken off with Bezos’ original ambition to build an “everything store”, Amazon has in the meantime morphed into an “everything company”. Amazon is most widely known as a retailer in e-commerce. Indeed, today a business cannot survive without selling through Amazon – and a pre-Covid survey suggests that half of internet users in major European economies live in a house with an Amazon prime account. But this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Amazon Web Services dominates the cloud computing market with almost one third of global market share. Amazon has entered health care and the finance sectors. Due to its growth in video content and advertising, Amazon is already one of the largest media corporations in the world. It already occupies one third of the streaming market.
With this economic power comes political power. And one reason for Amazon’s success is that it has creatively – and successfully – evaded regulation in the 21st century digital economy.
In Europe, this type of power has a number: annually, the company is spending 4.5 million euros on lobbying in Brussels, making it the 7th largest spender for a single company. With such a large lobbying budget comes the power to influence the decision-making process of the European Union to the disadvantage of workers, and the trade unions that represent them.
Annually, the company is spending 4.5 million euros on lobbying in Brussels, making it the 7th largest spender for a single company.
Earlier this year, however, coalition of trade unions, led by UNI Europa, the European Services Workers Union, and civil society organisations such as Corporate Europe Observatory made a dent in Amazon’s EU influence operations.
In 2021, Amazon refused to testify at a European Parliament hearing on working conditions. In December 2023, the company cancelled a visit by a delegation of Members of the European Parliament to its warehouses in Germany and Poland. The following month, the company refused – now for the third time – to engage with the Parliament by not participating in another hearing, citing scheduling issues. The same month, however, the company had attended nine meetings with MEPs, including one just a day after the hearing.
Amazon is used to flouting rules – and disregarding the European social model – with too little pushback. But this time it went too far. Amazon’s refusal to engage with our democratic institutions rubbed Members of European Parliament on the Employment and Social Affairs Committee the wrong way – and they initiated the procedure to get the company lobbyists’ badges withdrawn.
Amazon is used to flouting rules – and disregarding the European social model – with too little pushback.
As the coalition of trade unions and civil society organisations wrote in an open letter: “Amazon’s disregard for the EU’s democratic institutions should not allow the company to get off the hook.” It did not.
After weeks of campaigning, in February 2024, the European Parliament decided to bar Amazon’s 14 accredited lobbyists from its premises. This was only the second time in the history of the European Parliament, after Monsanto in 2017, that a corporation’s lobby access was removed – a huge success for corporate accountability.
After weeks of campaigning, in February 2024, the European Parliament decided to bar Amazon’s 14 accredited lobbyists from its premises.
Many of the parliamentarians had been steadfast allies of the global Make Amazon Pay campaign that was launched in 2020 by UNI Global Union, Progressive International and dozens of other trade unions, civil society organisations, data rights advocates and consumer groups. Each year, the campaign grew its public pressure campaign, most notably through coordinated strikes and protests across more than 30 countries on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year. Across political divides, the campaign moved the political terrain towards a more critical stance on Amazon– and eventually led to the parliamentarians taking action.
In response to the Parliament’s ban, Amazon stated that they “declined to participate in a session that was clearly one-sided and not designed to encourage constructive debate or objective scrutiny.” Curiously, until that point, Amazon had given scheduling reasons for not attending the latest hearing in the Committee in January 2024. And it’s a lopsided understanding of “one-sided” if both social partners – employer and trade unions – were invited to the hearing.
It was only after the Parliament’s decision and additional public scrutiny that Amazon updated its registration in the EU Transparency Register. Previously, the company reported spending 2.75 million euros, now it stands at a whopping 4.5 million euros. That’s a lot of money. But as the campaign to ban Amazon lobbyists shows, with political will corporate power can be reined in.
The decision by the European Parliament shows Amazon that it cannot continue disregarding our democratic institutions without consequences. We will continue to campaign so that the same will be true in the future when it comes to workers’ democratic rights: like the right to freely join a union and bargain for better conditions and pay.
Daniel Kopp is Director of Communications at UNI Europa, the European Services Workers Union.
Oliver Roethig is the Regional Secretary of UNI Europa, the European Services Workers Union.