Letter: Right of Reply from Amazon

Dear Editor,

In response to the EUobserver article of Friday 30 November, Instead of Black Friday, unions call for Make Amazon Pay Day, Amazon would like to respond, making the following points:

The fact is at Amazon we provide great pay, great benefits, and great opportunities — all from day one.

We directly employ more than 1.5 million people around the world, and provide a modern, safe, and engaging workplace whether you work in an office or at one of our operations buildings.

Amazon matched 100 percent of electricity used in its operations with renewable energy sources in 2023 and 2024, investing in more than 600 renewable energy projects worldwide and being named the top corporate purchaser of renewable energy globally since 2020.

Amazon is consistently working to make its operations more energy efficient, including our data centres. AWS data centres are up to 4.1 times more energy efficient than on-premises facilities.

When workloads are optimised on AWS, the associated carbon footprint can be reduced by up to 99 percent (Accenture research 2024).

Additionally, AWS aims to be water positive by 2030, returning more water to communities than it uses in its direct operations.

At Amazon, we work hard to earn customer trust, and customer privacy is a top priority.

We’re proud to innovate and continually improve the services we offer customers. As we innovate, we work with regulators to ensure new services are fully understood and legally compliant."

Corporate tax is based on profits, not revenues, and last year our European Stores business posted a loss.

We continued to invest heavily across the region, and have now invested more than €250bn in Europe since 2010, including more than €180bn in the EU.

We pay corporate tax in countries across Europe, amounting to hundreds of millions of euros, and we operate in full compliance with local tax laws everywhere.

Yours,

Annelise Helliwig-Schuster / Amazon