Convenience trumps conscience in online retail
Amazon hasn’t divulged exactly how much it hauled in on Cyber Monday, but the company did say it had its biggest sales day ever. I suppose this is good news in some quarters, consumer optimism being high and all that, but I’m pretty sure we are now one or two packages away from the end of the world. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a pang of nausea at the news of our impulsive, recordsetting gluttony and bad taste.
For many years, I righteously lamented the end of brick-andmortar retail but somewhere along the line I, like many others, waved a white flag and signed up for Amazon Prime.
The culture has been so dramatically transformed by the ease of internet shopping, I don’t know if we’ll ever return en masse to Main Street. But the pushback is well under way. On Cyber Monday, while the rest of us were shopping, Tom Dolan joined the picket line outside one of Amazon’s big distribution centers in San Bernardino, California.
Dolan, director of Inland Congregations United for Change, and at least 100 other people temporarily blocked departing trucks as they protested working conditions for Amazon employees and the impact of thousands of deliveries on air quality.
The unemployment rate in San Bernardino and Riverside counties has dipped dramatically, thanks largely to Amazon and related industries. But Dolan said the region has paid a stiff price for playing host to one of the biggest corporations in the world.
“Definitely jobs have been created, but they’re not good-paying jobs. Fifteen dollars an hour cannot sustain a family in Southern California and the impact on the environment is not something to be minimized,” said Dolan.
In an Amazon statement printed Monday in the Los Angeles Times, the company said it has invested $270 billion in the United States since 2011, created more than 400,000 jobs, committed to a $15 minimum wage and pledged to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040.
Dolan said internet shopping is probably here to stay. But he doesn’t think that means communities should stop fighting for wealthy corporations such as Amazon to pay living wages with good benefits and safe working conditions and to better mitigate the environmental impacts of such massive shipping operations.
“Amazon talks about investing $2 billion in this region, and my question is, ‘Where does that $2 billion come from?’ It came from the region. It’s not money Jeff Bezos inherited from his grandfather,” Dolan said, and part of it came from the sweat of employees who don’t earn a living wage while working for one of the richest men in the world.
And the rest of Bezos’ fortune? It came from those of us who should maybe think about making our next purchase at a local book store or shop — while a few of them still exist.