About 450 people participated in the protest action in front of the Axel Springer headquarters in Berlin, including the head of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Andrea Nahles. In the course of her speech, she noted that Jeff Bezos "did not deserve any prize" in view of the discontent German employees of Amazon.
Frank Bsirske, the head of the organized protest action of the trade union Verdi, speaking to the protesters with the posters "Make him pay!", said that Axel Springer publishing house’s decision to award Bezos is "a mockery and disgrace".
Germany is the second largest source of income for Amazon after the US. Over the past few years, local Amazon employees were protesting more often. For the same time, the EU authorities, as well as individual European countries, began to pay closer attention to Amazon’s practice of tax evasion, posing a few relatively small (compared to the company's total revenue for many years) fines to the company.
Another protest action against Amazon in the near future will not affect its financial status and dominant position in the segment of online purchases. Nevertheless, the attitude towards large IT corporations is undergoing serious changes throughout the world.
These "prizes" for "business innovation" and "social responsibility" from some monopolists (such as Axel Springer, one of the largest publishing companies in Europe) are increasingly looking like patting each other on the back, and are getting more and more grotesque features.
The peak of the power of IT monopolies in the current form is, quite possibly, already passed. Their owners are still rewarded with prizes, they are approached for some insight into future tendencies, not paying attention to the fact that thoughtless development of concepts of "creative destruction" and "burnout of glades" without real social responsibility leads to prosperity of only a limited number of individuals in the form of top management and company shareholders, while causing an aggravation of social contradictions.
source: reuters.com
Frank Bsirske, the head of the organized protest action of the trade union Verdi, speaking to the protesters with the posters "Make him pay!", said that Axel Springer publishing house’s decision to award Bezos is "a mockery and disgrace".
Germany is the second largest source of income for Amazon after the US. Over the past few years, local Amazon employees were protesting more often. For the same time, the EU authorities, as well as individual European countries, began to pay closer attention to Amazon’s practice of tax evasion, posing a few relatively small (compared to the company's total revenue for many years) fines to the company.
Another protest action against Amazon in the near future will not affect its financial status and dominant position in the segment of online purchases. Nevertheless, the attitude towards large IT corporations is undergoing serious changes throughout the world.
These "prizes" for "business innovation" and "social responsibility" from some monopolists (such as Axel Springer, one of the largest publishing companies in Europe) are increasingly looking like patting each other on the back, and are getting more and more grotesque features.
The peak of the power of IT monopolies in the current form is, quite possibly, already passed. Their owners are still rewarded with prizes, they are approached for some insight into future tendencies, not paying attention to the fact that thoughtless development of concepts of "creative destruction" and "burnout of glades" without real social responsibility leads to prosperity of only a limited number of individuals in the form of top management and company shareholders, while causing an aggravation of social contradictions.
source: reuters.com
