What Amazon’s Unionization Strikes Can Tell Us About the Power of Branding

Amazon workers around the world organized protests and strikes on Black Friday, one of the busiest times of the year for Amazon. Though walkouts on Black Friday and Prime Day (Amazon’s biannual version of Black Friday) have been ongoing since the early 2000s, the protests around November 27, 2020 culminated due to the additional pressures of working through the coronavirus pandemic. Because the pandemic limited the numbers of people who felt comfortable protesting in person, 2020’s protests utilized both in-person displays such as projections, and virtual messaging shared through memes on social media. The visual message of these protests was unified in reclaiming the symbols and branding of Amazon to criticize the power the company’s brand has on consumer culture and Amazon employee’s working rights.

A History of Amazon’s Working Conditions and Anti-Union Stance

Amazon’s warehouses have employed workers in the United States for 26 years and received complaints from workers about safety and lack of reasonable productivity metrics since. In 2011, employees made federal complaints to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) when Amazon would not install air conditioning systems or open doors and windows in the summer.[1] The warehouses would reach temperatures over 110 degrees, and paramedics would regularly station in front of the warehouses for those passing out from heat stroke on the job. These physical conditions were exacerbated by productivity requirements of warehouses which require employees to scan 600 boxes an hour, or 10 a minute.[2] While air conditioning needs were addressed a year later, these productivity demands have not changed and continue to be an extreme form of stress for employees. Though limited improvements to working conditions have come so far from individual complaints, the largest changes have come from the threat of federal legislation and media pressure when these stories reach the public. As awareness around warehouse conditions at Amazon grew and soured opinions of the company, Amazon looked for solutions that could improve the company’s image and encourage more temporary workers to apply for holiday seasonal roles. In 2018, Bernie Sanders introduced a bill called the Stop BEZOS Act, which would tax large employers such as Amazon when large portions of their working force must rely on food stamps.[3] Though the bill did not pass the Senate, the political pressure of the act encouraged Amazon to increase their starting pay to $15/hr.

In 2020, activists criticized that while Amazon sales reached record highs and Bezos’s wealth increased by over $70 billion in the past year, warehouse workers received hazard pay for only the first three months of the pandemic.[4] This movement has continued into 2021 now with Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama seeking to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Though Amazon workers have tried to unionize in other cities in the past, their efforts have been unsuccessful due to Amazon requiring anti-unionization trainings and practices common in other retail chains. In 2018, a Whole Foods employee leaked one of these training videos to the media, which encourages warehouse managers to monitor their employees for “the warning signs of organizing” and to “escalate concerns promptly” if employees express discontent with the working conditions of the warehouse.[5] Then, in 2020, as both warehouse and corporate employees of Amazon criticized the lack of PPE and social distancing within warehouses, Amazon fired at least six employees for being “on site for 15 minutes before or after” a shift or speaking with the media, or involvement with Prime Day protests.[6] By 2020, Amazon had become the largest employer in the U.S., so these safety violations and the lack of transparency around them put the safety of over 876,000 Americans at risk, along with their families, roommates, and friends.[7]

 What is Détournement?

Détournement is an art technique that involves reclaiming and repurposing a symbol or idea. Beginning with the Situationists of the 1950s, artists used the power and recognition of existing quotes, pictures, and brands and reconceptualized it to challenge the validity or role of this media in society. Following the market crash of 2008 and the relief Wall Street banks received to minimize their losses, the Occupy movement grew in popularity both in person and online. Artists with this movement, which could be anyone through social media graphics or memes, gravitated towards the slogan “We Are the 99%” to emphasize a class solidarity between the bank-operating wealthy and the remaining working class and used imagery already associated with wealth-disparity to create a more recognizable message. For example, one piece from the Occupy movement that repurposed a well-known symbol was the Bat Signal (Figure 1), which was a projection that said “99%” and used the iconography of the Batman projections.[8] The “99%” replaces Batman as the hero in this projection, and both Batman and the heroic people in the 99% are exposing the wrongdoings of the rich and corrupt.

How Prime Day Protests Engage With Détournement

On Black Friday in 2020 GMB, a large trade union in the United Kingdom, projected a banner on the Amazon’s London headquarters calling on the company to “Make Amazon Pay.”[9] The content of the banner was referencing the long-standing extreme disparity between the company’s revenue and income taxes paid, which felt even less appropriate when the company got more relief aid from federal governments than many small businesses (Figure 2). This banner uses the Amazon arrow motif, which normally represents a smiley face, and inverts it into a frown. GMB and activists supporting Amazon employees use this arrow on their protest posters, merchandise, websites, and social media graphics, to an extent that this symbol becomes a brand for the movement itself. When Amazon uses the arrow as a smile, it is mimicking a similar motion to the Disney logo, whose brand has long been associated with childhood nostalgia and imagination. In particular, when used on boxes in advertising, Amazon personifies their product and gives it a cartoonish life. Though a frowning face may seem like too childish of a symbol for the workplace dangers Amazon employees face, the empathy a cartoon creates supports the driving message that activists want to share with Amazon: “These are people making Amazon its money…they’re not robots.”[10]

Are Memes the New Frontier for Political Engagement?

Political memes have been around since the early 2000s and played a role in the Occupy Wall Street Movement and previous political elections, but they became widespread and influential with the 2016 election.[11] Meme creators can be anyone- corporations, politicians running for office, or individuals criticizing those corporations and politicians for their outdated memes and design choices. When Joe Biden revealed his logo for his 2020 presidential bid, public reception was critical because his branding leaned heavily on patriotic colors and traditional logo lockup suggested that both his design and appeal was out of style.[12] Social media literacy has become critical to appeal to younger voters and political activists, who enjoy the format of memes because they are easy to create, share, and modify to convey a new message. Meme formats that are not originally political can easily be transformed through rudimentary copy and paste and then shared on social media, and memes created for the Prime Day protests can use both the characterization of the original media or memes they co-opt or the logo and branding of Amazon (similar to the projection piece).­

In one meme (Figure 3), the artist uses an image from The Simpsons where a character is being held hostage and has to appear happy and safe.[13] It is used in response to a tweet where the user who presumably works at Amazon posts a message that appears scripted and suspicious, in a way that lets viewers know they should not take its message at face value. Though the content of the meme is not directly critiquing Amazon as the projection art, political legislation, or social media carousels might, memes allow social causes to be diluted into something humorous and easily shared without confrontation. This hostage-like text reflects the reputation that Amazon has for firing those who explicitly advocated for workers’ rights or critique the company’s practices and allows its author to have a plausible deniability if Amazon were to reprimand them for criticizing the company, which is a legitimate concern given Amazon’s history of silencing past critiques. The anonymity of social media platforms like Reddit, along with how rarely the original creator is ever credited for the meme when it is shared elsewhere, allows stories and opinions to be shared without retribution.