This Black Friday, a global coalition is holding Amazon to account | Casper Gelderblom

Jeff Bezos's company has made vast profits, but at a huge cost to workers and the planet. #MakeAmazonPay says: enough

Black Friday is here once again, and bargains abound. With widespread lockdowns preventing crowds at brick-and-mortar stores, online sales are expected to soar. One merchant, in particular, stands to profit greatly: Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, at the helm of one of the world's most powerful companies.

But this year's Black Friday not only presents an opportunity for Bezos to make extraordinary pandemic profits. It also marks the arrival of a new global movement linking warehouse workers, environmental activists and advocates for racial, tax, and data justice around the world in a common mission to #MakeAmazonPay.

This movement begins in Amazon's own warehouses. While Bezos's wealth has risen by more than $70bn (52bn) since the onset of the pandemic, Amazon workers have put their health at risk daily with only marginal increases in pay. The corporation is said to monitor its warehouse workers, sanctions them whenever their productivity drops and has spied on their efforts to organise. The result: claims that workers have been forced to urinate in bottles for lack of adequate break-time (Amazon has disputed such claims), thousands of Covid infections and claims of inadequate worker protections. Bezos could pay each of his 876,000 employees a $105,000 (79,000) bonus - and still be as obscenely rich as he was before the pandemic broke out.