Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) | Hansard source

As Australians gear up for the Black Friday sales tomorrow and look forward to receiving packages over coming weeks, it's important to remember the shady track record of one major company that looks to benefit the most from tomorrow's sale—that company being Amazon. Amazon are staunchly anti-union and seek to constantly deny workers a collective voice wherever they can. Behind the cheap prices and ease of online shopping hides the reality of a multibillion dollar company's appalling record on worker safety, pay and working conditions in their operations around the world.

The company has form when it comes to worker exploitation, surveillance and a workplace culture that clearly values profits over people. They do this by hiring warehouse staff as casuals and through labour hire avenues. They then impose punishing productivity targets and workplace surveillance. Amazon's workers have voiced their concerns that almost every move they make, every union engagement they try to have and even every bathroom break they try to take is being monitored and noted by management.

Our government's recent reforms to protect gig workers, labour hire workers and casuals are crucial to preventing exploitation of those workers here in Australia. To no-one's surprise, the Liberals and Nationals voted against these reforms. From Black Friday tomorrow to Cyber Monday this coming week, workers, trade unions, antipoverty and garment worker rights groups and others across the world are uniting with one goal in mind: to make Amazon pay—to pay its workers fairly for the work they do and to respect their right to join a union. While it's clear that online retail giants like Amazon are reshaping how we shop, we can't allow them to reshape how we uphold workers' rights in this country.