An organizer with the No Tech for Apartheid and No Tech for ICE campaigns disrupts the annual Amazon Web Services conference in protest of the company's business with Israel and the Department of Homeland Security.

ATHENA COALITION

ATHENA COALITION

Athena is a coalition of 50+ organizations that challenges the power of Amazon: the corporation posing the single greatest threat to our economy and democracy today. 

As the second largest employer in the country and one of the largest monopolies in the world, Amazon has outsized influence on worker conditions, our communities, our democracy, and our environment. To fight one of the biggest corporate giants of our time, we saw an opportunity to be united not only in our organizing but in our analysis of its intersectional harms as well.

Amazon workers on strike protesting working conditions. A few individuals holding "ON STRIKE" signs, with an Amazon Prime truck looming in the background of the photo.

PRESS & EARNED MEDIA

In order to support the movement of Amazon workers organizing across the country, we pitched and placed stories that:

Amplified direct worker action
especially on days of coordinated action

Refuted Amazon's claims of improving workplace conditions and safety.

Elevated Amazon tech worker organizing
against the corporation’s surveillance deals with police, ICE, and the Israeli military

ADVOCACY, RESEARCH, & WRITING

To spur action from elected officials about the corporate concentration and worker safety crises at Amazon, we researched, wrote, and secured earned media on:

A reporter and Congressional staff memo outlining strides in the Amazon antimonopoly movement at the end of the 117th Congress

A letter to Congress requesting a hearing about the ongoing worker safety

Opinion articles by small businesses and advocates in support of breaking up Amazon

Results

Following the coalition’s calls for Congressional hearings, a Congressional subcommittee held a hearing featuring experts from Athena.

By demanding more from their workplace, Amazon workers have won safety measures like heat protection and protection for organizing workers.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Chair, Senator Bernie Sanders, announced an investigation into Amazon’s working conditions.

OSHA has issued citations against seven Amazon warehouses, specifically calling out untenable worker productivity rates as the cause for worker injury rates.