For those who might not know the Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is the ‘richest person in the world.’ Many people online are quite angry after hearing that he has publicized a relief fund that the public can donate to.
This relief fund would go to his contract employees and initially began with around 25 million dollars. This is called the Amazon Relief Fund and while the company itself did contribute a large amount to the fund itself, people seem to think Bezos should be pulling a lot more out-of-pocket. That being said, is there really anything wrong with donating if you feel like it’s important to you?
While the company says on their website that they will make additional contributions to the fund as needed, Twitter users seem to think they should be doing that already instead of suggesting that the public donate when the public could be donating to someone or something that doesn’t have the funds to actually stay functional. Considering Amazon itself is worth 1 trillion US dollars, it does seem a bit silly.
Amazon set up a relief fund for its employees and is asking us to donate.
Amazon is worth nearly $1 trillion.
Amazon paid a negative federal income tax rate in 2018. They paid nothing but got millions in government subsidies.
How is this real. https://t.co/MiLArAnTdA
— Rob Hart (@robwhart) March 21, 2020
While people seem to be outraged the company has not outright asked people to donate or been pushing them to do-so. They merely made the option present for their fundraiser itself. This something it seems people are taking the wrong way.
How is your company worth over a TRILLION dollars and you want the public to donate to an employee relief fund?! As if Amazon can’t pay their employees themselves smfh
— Bean$z (@Beanszzz) March 21, 2020
A spokesperson from Amazon actually told The Independent as follows on this topic:
“We are not and have not asked for donations and the Amazon Relief Fund has been funded by Amazon with an initial donation of $25 million. The structure to operate a fund like this, which hundreds of companies do through the same third-party, requires the program to be open to public contributions but we are not soliciting those contributions in any way.”
That meaning that according to this spokesperson the option for the public to donate is only there because it was required to be there through the third-party they crated the Fund through. This lines up with their words on the site for their fund as well which says something like “While we aren’t expecting anyone to do so, you can make a voluntary donation to the fund if you desire to do so.” I am sure this public outrage will die down soon but do you think there was anything wrong with the fund itself? To see more about what people have had to say in response to the optional donations take a peek at some of the tweets below.
I can’t even process this…
Amazon — you know, the one run by the richest man, the one whose sales have shot up during a pandemic — is doing an online fundraiser. Asking all of us to donate to support its warehouse temps & flex drivers hit by Covid.
https://t.co/QWd851eXBk— Stacy Mitchell (@stacyfmitchell) March 20, 2020
The fact that Amazon has made billions in profits and continues to profit during this crisis, but set up a charity called Amazon Relief Fund so Amazon customers could donate to help their workers affected by corona virus is really telling.
— Jay Long (@jaywrong) March 22, 2020
Amazon has a relief fund for their workers…
AMAZON
The one whose founder is Jeff Bezos?
The man whose net worth is $110 BILLION.
Does anyone ANYONE else see the irony in this??
— Faizah (@_FaizahKarim) March 21, 2020