Living Wage protest from Amazon Anonymous

Anti-Amazon campaign group Amazon Anonymous has this morning (11th June) listed a "product" titled “Living Wages for Amazon Workers!” (now removed) on the website it campaigns against, in a protest stunt against the company.

At 9a.m. this morning, a link to the Living Wages for Amazon Workers! went live on Amazon.co.uk, priced at £7.65, which is the general Living Wage in the UK.

The Amazon Anonymous Campaign launched in March, handing a petition signed by 56,000 people in to the Amazon headquarters offices in London’s Holborn, calling on the company to pay its warehouse workers the Living Wage - the salary the campaign body believes people need to live on (above the national minimum wage of £6.31 an hour.)

The campaign is called Amazon Anonymous because it aims to encourage Amazon customers to “kick their habit” of shopping at the online retailer to support more ethical companies instead.

Emily Kenway, founder of the Amazon Anonymous campaign told The Bookseller: “Thousands of people have taken our e-action and yet Amazon hasn't responded, so we're taking the call for Living Wages direct to the Amazon site. People will be able to 'review' the product like any other which lends a nice interactive element.” She added: “If and when Amazon takes the listing down, it will send you directly to a page with a screenshot of it so that people who choose to click on it after Amazon's pulled it don't just go to a dead page.”

The product description said: “Over 62,000 people have called on Amazon to end poverty pay in 2014 - but Amazon has yet to take our demand seriously so we've brought it direct to amazon.co.uk. £7.65 is the living wage rate across the UK outside London where most of Amazon's warehouses are located. That's all it needs to commit to paying to end poverty wages. Why not review this product below and let Amazon know that its time to pay the human cost of its operations?”

The campaign argued that the company achieves billions in UK sales each year and “has more than enough money to pay its workers wages they can live on.”

Kenway is also protesting about the company’s “unfair” sack-if-you're-sick policies.

The protest comes at a time Amazon is making the news for refusing to sell the books of publisher Hachette in the US due to an ongoing disagreement over terms.

Meanwhile it has also emerged that the company is refusing to sell Warner Home products over a similar fracas over margin. Customers have not been able to pre-order The Lego Movie, 300: Rise of an Empire, Winter’s Tale or Transcendence since mid-May because of the fall-out, according to The New York Times.

The dispute also follows that of a stand-off between Amazon and publisher Bonnier in Germany.

However, A Warner Bros. spokesman said it was the company’s “general policy not to comment on contract terms or any other proprietary information having to do with our partners” and an Amazon spokesman declined to comment.