Consumer Power
by Miki Saxon
Do you care about the appalling conditions of many workplaces? Not overseas, but here, in the US?
Do you care about the impact enterprise has on the environment?
On people?
Do you fret, because you can’t DO anything?
Or can you?
Fashion has a terrible environmental report card, especially so-called “fast fashion.”
Change happens when we consumers vote with our feet and take our money elsewhere.
Fast fashion may be on its last legs. Take it from H&M, which was forced to admit in its March financial report that it had $4.3 billion of unsold inventory left hanging on its racks, along with a massive drop in sales. In fact, the Swedish company has started incinerating clothes in power plants to generate energy. When you consider all of the raw materials, chemical pollution, human labor, and transportation costs required to make just a single shirt, the scale of the waste is astounding.
Brands may seem impervious to complaints, negative press and exposés, but the operative word is ‘seems’, as Ivanka Trump learned when she was forced to shut down her fashion line.
The business seemed to be floundering: One source found that online sales of Ivanka Trump products sold on Amazon, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, and Zappos fell nearly 55% over the last year. (…) The brand was the target of a massive boycott, spearheaded by Grab Your Wallet, a movement urging people to protest the Trump family’s ethical violations by refusing to shop with retailers selling their brands.
The article made me wonder if the same approach could affect Amazon, the 8 thousand pound gorilla of ecommerce
Wait a minute, didn’t Amazon just agree to pay minimum wages to all workers?
Today (Oct. 2), he announced that he will be raising the minimum wages for his e-commerce company’s US workers to $15 an hour, a move that will affect 250,000 full-time employees and 100,000 seasonal workers.
Yes, and while it looks like a big deal, it was more in the line of self-preservation.
Earning $15 an hour isn’t likely to impress Amazon’s Prime customers, who mostly earn far more (it takes 8 hours of very hard work to pay for Prime).
But just as fashion takes a huge toll from the environment and labor, the people who deliver your packages pay an exorbitantly high price for the privilege.
For Amazon, paying third-party companies to deliver packages is a cost-effective alternative to providing full employment. And the speed of two-day shipping is great for consumers. But delivering that many packages isn’t easy, and the job is riddled with problems, (…) Others, including several labor experts, said they felt blame should be placed with Amazon, adding that the company was pressuring courier companies to deliver more, faster. They said Amazon was profiting off cheap labor that it doesn’t have to protect because it’s outsourcing the job to companies that it doesn’t adequately supervise.
Read the article and you’ll see conditions similar, maybe worse, to those that have led to protests, boycotts and change when they’ve happen on production lines overseas.
Amazon’s response is typical.
“We have worked with our partners, listened to their needs, and have implemented new programs to ensure small delivery businesses serving Amazon customers have the tools they need to deliver a great customer and employee experience.”
Nothing about driver experience.
The problem has nothing to do with Bezos’ wealth, he earned that, and everything to do with Amazon using it’s savvy, backed by it’s power, to change the game.
So how do you get the attention of an 8 thousand pound gorilla?
The same way consumers moved the fashion industry — money.
Think of the effect if just 20% (or more) of the 100 million paying Prime members bought just two items a month from a different merchant.
There’s no question that would get Amazon’s attention.
Image credit: Drew Stephens
