Twitch, owned by Amazon, has pulled Amazon’s anti-union advertisements that were running on its platform soon after they began running. According to reports, the ads first ran in the state of Alabama where Amazon workers are still deciding on whether to unionize or not.
Twitch’s statement on the misguiding advertisements
These ads are…in the layman’s language…misguiding. They gave out an impression that union formation is bad and wrong in its entirety. These advertisements claimed that the unions simply take your money and don’t do anything for you. According to the advertisement, Amazon workers already have everything they need. The ads received noticeable backlash from Twitch’s community before the platform decided to take it down.
As favorable to the specialist as Twitch’s move appeared to be apparently, it is tragically not be guaranteed as an intentional effort to rectify the actual problem with the ad. In articulation to journalist Rod Breslau, Twitch said that Amazon’s advertisements were essentially taken out because they disregarded its guidelines against political promoting.
Twitch said in a statement that these advertisements ought to never have been permitted to run on their platform. The organization has eliminated these advertisements and is assessing its audit cycles to guarantee that comparative substance doesn’t run later on.
Amazon’s history against unionization of the workers
Amazon has a long, forceful history of attempting to prevent its laborers from unionizing, but has as of late increased its association busting game amid the memorable vote at its Bessemer, Alabama distribution center.
Around 5,800 warehouse workers are deciding on whether to join the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, with polling forms to be sent by March 29. In the event that the greater part votes indeed, the Bessemer plant will become the originally unionized Amazon warehouse in the U.S.
Typically, Amazon isn’t a fanatic of the thought, and Twitch’s video advertisements aren’t the lone medium it’s been utilizing to spread its enemy of association notions. The organization has likewise over and over messaged hostile to unionization messages to its workers, posted anti-union flyers in its warehouse restrooms, held compulsory anti-union gatherings, and conveyed handouts training its workers to cast a ballot against unionizing. It further trained specialists at its Bessemer stockroom to drop their voting forms in a shiny new letterbox that showed up close to the office’s passage, causing workers to feel surveilled.
An Amazon representative revealed to Motherboard the letterbox was just introduced “for the accommodation of [its] workers.”
