Workers and activists in more than 20 countries are expected to protest as part of a campaign led by “Make Amazon Pay,” a coalition of 70 trade unions and organizations including Greenpeace, Oxfam, and Amazon Workers International.
Individuals everywhere “from oil refineries, to factories, to warehouses, to data centers, to corporate offices” are expected to participate in the November 26 event, according to the campaign.
“The pandemic has exposed how Amazon places profits ahead of workers, society, and our planet,” Make Amazon Pay wrote in a list of demands shared on its website. “Amazon takes too much and gives back too little. It is time to Make Amazon Pay.”
The protests come amid growing dissent from Amazon employees over working conditions, including long hours, low pay, and complex performance review systems. Make Amazon Pay’s demands include increased salaries, better job security, and “suspending the harsh productivity and surveillance regime Amazon has used to squeeze workers.”
The coalition also calls for a “pay back to society” that includes enhanced sustainability efforts, increased transparency over data and privacy, and ending partnerships with police forces and immigration authorities that are “institutionally racist.”
“Amazon is not alone in these bad practices but it sits at the heart of a failed system that drives the inequality, climate breakdown, and democratic decay that scar our age,” Make Amazon Pay wrote in its demands.
In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told Insider that the company is “inventing and investing significantly” in several of the categories the campaign addresses, including climate efforts, like a commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 and pushes to improve competitive wages and benefits.
“These groups represent a variety of interests, and while we are not perfect in any area, if you objectively look at what Amazon is doing in each one of these areas you’ll see that we do take our role and our impact very seriously,” Nantel said.
The rank-and-file membership of the Teamsters sent a clear message – they are ready for the union to fight the employers for stronger contracts and end the age of endless concessions to the bosses. Hoffa Jr. sealed his fate in 2018-2019 when he used a bogus clause in the union’s constitution to approve the UPS contract, despite the membership voting to reject the weak contract three separate times.
The Moon. Art by Karina Pavlova, from The Corrupted Tarot.
A shattered reflection of a werewolf—as unstable in her physical form as she is in her wrecked mind. She denies accepting all the facets of her nature, including her weakness and monstrousness. When the corrupted Moon appears in a reading, you must muster your courage and sense of self, or you will remain lost in the darkness.
In the past, nearby residents weren’t necessarily enamored with the idea of a pollution-spewing power plant warming their deep, cold water lake, but at least the electricity produced by the plant was powering their homes. Sixty percent still does, Greenidge said, but the rest of the time, the turbines are burning natural gas to mint profits for the private equity firm Atlas Holdings by mining bitcoin.
Atlas, the firm that bought Greenidge has been ramping up its bitcoin mining aspirations over the last year and a half, installing thousands of mining rigs that have produced over 1,100 bitcoin as of February 2021. The company has plans to install thousands more rigs, ultimately using 85 MW of the station’s total 108 MW capacity.
Seneca Lake’s water isn’t the only thing the power plant is warming. In December 2020, with the power plant running at just 13 percent of its capacity, Atlas’ bitcoin operations there produced 243,103 tons of carbon dioxide and equivalent greenhouse gases, a ten-fold increase from January 2020 when mining commenced. NOx pollution, which is responsible for everything from asthma, lung cancer, and premature death, also rose 10x.
The plant currently has a permit to emit 641,000 tons CO2e every year, though if Atlas wants to maximize its return on investment and use all 106 MW of the plant’s capacity, its carbon pollution could surge to 1.06 million tons per year, according to Earthjustice and the Sierra Club. Expect NOx emissions—and health impacts—to rise accordingly. The project’s only tangible benefit (apart from dividends appearing in investors’ pockets) are the company’s claimed 31 jobs.
Aidos Daribayev further noted that the consumption of energy in the country increased by 8% during the first 10 months of the year 2021, While in previous years the growth rate was between 1 to 2% per year.
In 2021, the electricity use in Kazakhstan reached 82.99 billion kWh. The Kazakhstan Energy Ministry attributed this high consumption to Bitcoin mining data centers in the country.
According to the ministry, about 50 data centers focused on the production of cryptocurrencies are located in Kazakhstan. Their load is 693.3 MW, and the total permitted capacity according to technical conditions is 972.3 MW.
