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Amazon.co.uk has taken down a dummy book on its website calling for the company to pay its workers the Living Wage.
The stunt, organized this morning (11th June) by the Amazon Anonymous campaign, placed a "book" for sale on the online retailer, Living Wages for Amazon Workers!, valued at £7.65 - the general Living Wage for the UK – in order to put pressure on Amazon to pay its workers more.
The page was live for nearly two hours before Amazon removed it, by which time it had already received over 100 "reviews" from supporters backing the campaign and calling on the retailer to pay more to its warehouse workers.
The page containing the reviews is now up on the Amazon Anonymous website instead for people to read.
The campaign group said it was “working to get the link back up” on Amazon again soon.
Emily Kenway, founder of Amazon Anonymous, said: “I think it speaks volumes that the page received 100 reviews in over an hour, which was the result of lots of different NGOs sharing it across social media, but also Amazon customers contributing their own reviews. Amazon customers can only review a product if they have bought something from Amazon at least 48 hours ago, so they are real Amazon customers who have taken the time to write on Amazon’s own website, which shows that they really care about this issue.”
The product information had said: “Over 62,000 people have called on Amazon to end poverty pay in 2014 - but Amazon has yet to take our demand seriously so we've brought it direct to amazon.co.uk. £7.65 is the living wage rate across the UK outside London where most of Amazon's warehouses are located. That's all it needs to commit to paying to end poverty wages. Why not review this product below and let Amazon know that its time to pay the human cost of its operations?”
The campaign argued that the company achieves billions in UK sales each year and “has more than enough money to pay its workers wages they can live on.”