6. Amazon is damaging small independent businesses.
Amazon has come to dominate many online markets globally.
It entered the UK market in 1998, just three years after its inception in the US and today its name is synonymous with online shopping.
In the UK, Amazon's net sales have tripled since 2018, and the UK is Amazon’s second-biggest market in Europe after Germany. According to Statista, its net sales in the UK were USD $43.2 billion in 2026.
And it apparently took 18% of all Black Friday sales in the UK in 2024.
Its monopoly has marginalised many small independent businesses.
Since Amazon launched as a bookseller a quarter of a century ago, the UK and Ireland have lost almost 1,000 independent bookshops.
Bookshops are not the only independent retailers that believe themselves to have been damaged by Amazon’s monopoly. A 2022 report found that in the US, Amazon's market capture had displaced 136,000 bricks and mortar shops, and the rise of its warehouses provided only half as many jobs as the 1.7 million retail roles that have been lost to its monopoly.
Amazon’s monopoly supports staggering inequalities: owner Jeff Bezos is estimated to have accrued over $370 billion (£279.5 billion) in personal wealth as of October 2026.
If a worker was paid the UK real living wage of £13.45 an hour, they would have to work a full time job for more than 15.7 million years to make as much money as Bezos.
7. Amazon has repeatedly been accused of racism.
Year after year, accusations surface about Amazon’s racist behaviour.
In 2024, the human resources and recruitment journal Grapevine reported the case of a black female at AWS who alleged that she “has been harassed, sexually assaulted, and kept from advancing to positions she deserved in the corporation.” Her attorneys argued in the lawsuit that "Like so many other black and female employees at Amazon, Charlotte Newman was confronted with a systemic pattern of insurmountable discrimination based upon the color of her skin and her gender". Amazon said it was reviewing the allegations and that it does not “tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind”. In March 2025, Bloomberg reported that US District Court judge dismissed the suit and Charlotte Newman agreed to stop pursuing it. The terms of reaching the agreement weren’t made public.
In July 2022, Amazon was accused of failing to respond after American warehouse workers received death threats and racist abuse. One worker said she was fired after telling Amazon she'd take legal action if her complaints of racism weren't addressed.
In 2021, Amazon was sued in the US over accusations of "systemic" racism in its offices. A manager said that Black people were hired for lower positions and were not promoted as quickly.
Amazon has also enabled racial-bias and racial profiling through its technology.
In 2018 and again in 2020, testing of Amazon’s ‘Rekognition’ facial software showed it to be fundamentally racially-biased. The software was found to disproportionately identify Black members of Congress or Parliament as people who had been arrested and had mugshots held in a police database.
In 2020, campaigners won a victory after the company announced a one-year moratorium on selling the technology to US police. A year later, the company announced that it would be extending the moratorium indefinitely. Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy project director at the American Civil Liberties Union said in response to the announcement:
"Face recognition technology fuels the over-policing of Black and Brown communities, and has already led to the false arrests and wrongful incarcerations of multiple Black men.”
However, in early 2024, the Department of Justice has disclosed that the FBI is in the “initiation” phase of using Amazon’s Rekognition software. Amazon defended the sale by claiming it was only ever applied to police forces when conducting criminal investigations.
8. Amazon is accused of union busting.
Amazon has been consistently working to break unionising efforts.
On many occasions Amazon has aggressively opposed unionisation and organising efforts at its UK warehouses. In April 2024, the GMB labour union initiated legal action against the company, alleging that Amazon had made broad attempts to pressure employees into withdrawing their trade union membership.
According to the GMB amazon has:
- "Pressured staff to leave the union. Company bosses have erected QR codes in Amazon fulfilment centres which generate an email to the union’s membership department requesting that membership is cancelled.
- Forced workers to attend hour long anti-union seminars. Led by senior company managers, these briefings forced workers to listen to anti-union messages on work time.
- Displayed anti-union messages throughout Amazon workplaces, including on billboards and screens.”
The court case appeared to be ongoing as of October 2026.
Back in July 2024, in a historic vote, Amazon workers very narrowly rejected a union in its Coventry warehouse in the UK.
Gaining formal union recognition would have required Amazon to engage in negotiations with GMB over issues such as wages, working hours, and holiday entitlements.
Amazon has reportedly spent tens of millions on anti-union consultants. According to the Huffington post, this figure was $4.3 million in 2021 but increased threefold by 2024.
“Amazon is busting democracy, not just unions”, said Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of UNI Global Union in a piece published in November 2024, reflecting on Black Friday.
9. Amazon has faced questions over spying on politicians, trade unions, and consumers.
In January 2025, the Medium reported that a group of U.S. consumers has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing Amazon of deliberately spying on millions of users by giving a software development kit to app developers that allegedly gave the company backdoor access to users’ timestamped location data.
In June 2023, Amazon agreed to pay over $30 million to settle two privacy cases relating to its Alexa speakers and security camera unit, Ring. The company was accused of storing the voices and geolocation of children after they used Alexa. It was also accused of security failures for its Ring cameras, which put users’ private videos, their accounts, cameras, and videos at risk of being controlled by hackers, according to the suit.
In 2020, Amazon was accused of spying on politicians and trade union workers. The company published two job posts for ‘intelligence analysts’ in the US, the roles for which included investigating the threat of organised labour against the company and monitoring ‘hostile political leaders’.
The company deleted the job posts after they were widely publicised, and has since stated that they were inaccurate and posted in error. But a group of MEPs wrote to Jeff Bezos – Amazon’s founder and chief executive – expressing concern over “increasing warnings about your company’s anti-union policy”.
10. You’ll be in solidarity with workers and activists globally.
Organisations all over the world have been protesting Amazon’s actions - from workers' unions and civil society organisations to anti-racism and anti-gentrification campaigns.
#MakeAmazonPay is a global coalition demanding that the company address its workers’, environmental and political abuses. It has brought together a wide range of those campaigning against Amazon, including Ethical Consumer. It leads global protests against the company, including recommending boycotts of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Some campaigns have seen major success.
It was reported in July 2025, that the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal has approved a £1.3 billion collective lawsuit against Amazon, allowing a major consumer compensation claim to proceed. Led by advocate Robert Hammond, the case alleges that Amazon’s “Buy Box” algorithm unfairly favoured its own offers and those using its Fulfilment by Amazon service, causing around 49 million UK shoppers to pay inflated prices between 2015 and 2023. The ruling means all eligible UK consumers are automatically included unless they opt out. This case adds to growing regulatory scrutiny of Amazon across Europe for anti-competitive practices and could lead to significant payouts if successful.
In April 2022, workers formed the first ever dedicated union at the company.
In May 2021, the European Parliament challenged Jeff Bezos over Amazon’s union-busting and spying on workers.
In 2019, New York activists successfully drove Amazon away from the city where it had planned to build an HQ2 in return for almost $3 million in tax deals.
Make Amazon Pay reports that:
- In Italy, workers have won Amazon's first nationwide agreement, curbing surveillance.
- In India, strikes helped win social-security protections for delivery workers.
- In Canada, warehouse workers won union recognition.
- In Germany, union organisers have secured works councils across the country.
By boycotting the company, you will be taking part in this global movement and building the pressure on Amazon – or the legislation that allows its abuses – to change.
