One activist group has decided to take Amazon and Walmart to task on the world stage.
Walmart CEO: A Changing Consumer Alters Tech, Supply Chain Strategies
Oxfam, which aims to fight inequality and poverty globally, announced Thursday it had submitted a formal complaint against both companies to the United Nations ’ Working Group on Business & Human Rights, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Poverty and the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Association.
The organization, which has support from a number of other groups and two anonymized employees—one from Walmart and one from Amazon—accuses both behemoths of “systematic human rights violations” against their workers.
Oxfam has condemned both companies’ conduct in the past, by putting forth survey results showing the negative impacts workplace surveillance mechanisms reportedly have on employees at each company and sharing social media campaigns demanding the companies make changes to protect employees’ health and safety. Those results, alongside anecdotes from workers and criticisms against the two companies from governments, scholars and others, are used as the crux of Oxfam’s argument throughout the complaint.
The organization states that the two companies “sacrifice the wellbeing of workers in a drive for profit maximization.” Those actions, co-signers further allege, include implementing “particularly repressive” surveillance technology that has resulted in mental and physical distress; proliferating inequities challenging women and people of color in the workplace at higher rates than their white male counterparts; paying low wages that are “driving economic inequality”; busting union and organizing activities among workers and more.
Though Oxfam has, in the past, voiced its dismay for the conditions workers at each company report enduring, it has never before complained to the United Nations about either company. Diana Kearney, legal and shareholder advocacy lead for Oxfam America’s private sector department, said it makes sense to do so now because of the corporations’ apathy toward prior calls to action from various stakeholders.
“We are sounding the alarm to the United Nations in hopes that the world’s highest human rights authorities can call out and help rectify Amazon and Walmart’s abusive labor policies. When companies won’t listen to concerns about worker health and safety—not to mention deepening inequality—voiced by their own employees, investors or even government agencies, we’re forced to look to the UN to compel changes in their harmful labor practices. Public censure from this global authority cannot be ignored,” Kearney told Sourcing Journal.
Oxfam is far from the only organization that has tried to take action against Amazon and Walmart; earlier this year, the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) named Walmart to its “Dirty Dozen” list, accusing it of “unsafe and reckless” conduct toward its employees. Other organizations, like United for Respect (UFR) have targeted both behemoths in past campaigns, demanding better worker protections.
A Tennessee-based Walmart employee, who asked to share comments anonymously for fear of retribution, said the claims Oxfam outlines in the report to the UN are consistent with her experience. That employee co-signed Oxfam’s complaint to the regulatory body.
She described injuring her back in a Walmart store after falling due to unsafe conditions that she said she and her team reported to managers multiple times, to no avail. Because she feared retaliation from Walmart, she chose not to report her injury—and, subsequently, did not provide the employer with a medical note because she felt she would likely lose her job.
“Due to fear of losing funding—because I’m the primary caregiver and provider in my home, and I have a child—I didn’t turn the [doctors’] paperwork in, even though I had the paperwork, because I didn’t want to potentially lose my job. I didn’t want to have to take [unpaid] time off,” she said, noting that her experience is consistent with what she has seen among other colleagues hesitant to take time off for an injury out of fear of being reprimanded against Walmart’s attendance mechanism, which workers call “the points system.”
The employee said, as a woman of color, she feels Walmart expects more from her than it does her white male colleagues, without commensurate pay, which has taken a toll on her, both mentally and physically.
“The pay never matches. We’re never paid as well as our white counterparts, and we’re made to feel like we’re going to get in trouble if we discuss pay to see if there’s any disparity between the two, so you can’t talk money, even though money is a major motivating factor. It would be helpful to know that somebody that does the same job as me makes $2 more than me just because they’re male and they’re white,” the employee told Sourcing Journal.
Holiday Hiring Across Logistics Looks Very Similar to 2023
Sourcing Journal was not able to speak directly with the anonymous Amazon employee who co-signed the complaint to the UN. However, throughout the letter, Oxfam uses information it gained from qualitative interviews with employees to bolster its points about the severity of the outlined issues.
“They monitor us with cameras. They have cameras throughout their whole building. They also have process assistants who walk around just to see if you’re on your phone so they can write you up…They just try to find things that basically write you up for…three write ups leads to disciplinary action….It’s not a good feeling at all because it’s like we’re in prison,” an Amazon employee reportedly told Oxfam.
Amazon declined to comment directly on Oxfam formally lodging a complaint with the UN, but a spokesperson referred Sourcing Journal to an April blog post in which it refutes Oxfam’s claims around worker mistreatment, injury rates and worker reporting mechanisms.
“The safety of our employees is—and always will be—our top priority. We have made, and continue to make, significant investments to ensure our workspaces are safe and improve safety outcomes for our employees. From 2019-2022, we invested more than $1 billion in safety projects and initiatives (unrelated to COVID-19) across Amazon,” the company wrote at the time.
Like Amazon, Walmart declined to comment on the UN complaint directly, instead pointing Sourcing Journal to its employee privacy notice and its ethics and compliance page.
On that page, the company states, “The health and safety of our associates and customers are not just business needs—they tie to our core values… Walmart is dedicated to preserving the health and safety of our associates and customers, including the goal of compliance with all environmental, health and safety laws and regulations.”
In the complaint, Oxfam and its co-signers call on the United Nations’ working groups to send communication to both companies, asking them to take more measures to reduce injury rates in company facilities; “cease or significantly reform” how they use worker surveillance technology; create policies to prevent and address existing disparities based on race and gender; increase their base pay and more.
It also asks the UN to “encourage the U.S. government” to enact various types of legislation, including anti-speed quota laws , which some states have already implemented ; laws against “oppressive surveillance and misuse of AI in the workplace” and laws requiring paid sick, family and medical leave.
The Walmart employee said personally, she’d like to see Walmart raise wages, provide employees with in-facility medical care options for injuries sustained at work, amplify the benefits and resources it offers employees around mental and physical health and take preventative practices—like stretching before a shift—seriously to help mitigate injury.
For her, co-signing this complaint is a way to advocate for a safer, less oppressive workplace—not just for herself, but for the many colleagues she has worked with during her time in various roles at Walmart.
“Participating in the complaint gives me a voice for the voiceless, because a lot of people experience this, but they’re afraid to say anything,” she told Sourcing Journal. “Walmart is not reacting to the seriousness of the issues, so I felt like, if we elevated this [to the] level of [the UN] getting involved, maybe that’ll make them do more.”
Amazon to Deploy AI-Powered Tech to Help Delivery Drivers Find Packages
Local News
Comments / 0