On Friday 25 November 2022, on the occassion of Black Friday, a demonstration called "Make Amazon Pay" is taking place in Place Clairefontaine in Luxembourg-Ville at 15:00.

The event is co-organised by Rise for Climate Luxembourg, OGBL, Action Solidarité Tiers Monde (ASTM), Collectif Tax Justice Lëtzebuerg, Etika asbl, Déi Lénk, Attac Luxembourg and Youth for Climate Luxembourg, and calls for an end destructive and unfair practices by Amazon.

According to the organisers, Make Amazon Pay is a coalition of over 80 organisations uniting workers and citizens, coordinated by Progressive International and UNI Global Union, representing over 20 million workers in 150 countries.

Organisers said that Amazon is suffocating communities by not paying income tax in Europe in 2021 and instead receiving €1 billion in tax credits on €55 billion in sales. The fact that Amazon Europe is based in Luxembourg is no accident. The advantageous tax rulings in our country encourage many companies to set up in the Grand Duchy to save taxes. The problem from an international point of view is that Luxembourg deprives its European neighbours of the money they would otherwise have received from multinationals like Amazon. The organisers ask: What about solidarity and tax justice within Europe and beyond?

The organisers clarified that while people working in Luxembourg wait in vain for a tax reform, Amazon Europe paid no taxes in the Grand Duchy in 2021.

Amazon employs more than one million workers and we have often heard about the poor conditions under which these people work (low wages, frenetic work pace, repression of unionisation attempts etc.). Amazon's exploitative practices are lowering labour standards everywhere and its destructive business model (ultra-fast deliveries by plane, artificialisation of land by building more and more warehouses, etc.) is propelling us even faster into environmental disaster, according to the organisers.

Amazon can afford to pay for its workers, for the planet and for communities, but they will only do so if they have to.

That's what the Make Amazon Pay movement is fighting for, explained the organisers.

On Friday, nearly 30 such events are planned globally.