Amazon to pay $1.9 million to migrant contract workers to settle claims of human rights abuses
Packages move along a conveyor belt at an Amazon Fulfillment center on Cyber Monday in Robbinsville, New Jersey, on Nov. 28, 2022.
Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon will pay more than 700 migrant workers roughly $1.9 million to settle claims they suffered human rights abuses as a result of exploitative labor contracts in Saudi Arabia.
In a blog post Thursday, the company said it hired a third-party labor rights expert, Verité, last year to investigate conditions at two of its warehouses in Saudi Arabia. Verité identified numerous practices in violation of Amazon’s supply chain standards, the company said.
Last October, an Amnesty International report, as well as an investigation from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism as well as The Guardian, detailed accounts of grim conditions for migrant workers at Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia.
Migrant workers, many of whom were Nepalese, were deceived by third-party recruiting agencies into thinking they would work directly for Amazon, and forced to pay unlawful fees to obtain employment, the Amnesty report said. While they worked at Amazon warehouses, the workers were housed in accommodations that were “overcrowded and dirty, infested with bed bugs and lacking even the most basic facilities,” Amnesty wrote. In some cases, the agencies prevented employees from changing jobs or leaving Saudi Arabia unless they paid hefty fines, which they often couldn’t afford without taking out burdensome loans.
The abuses suffered by workers were so severe that they likely amounted to “human trafficking for the purpose of labor exploitation as defined by international law and standards,” Amnesty wrote in the October report.
Amazon said it became aware of the issues before reports from groups like Amnesty. The company said Verité interviewed employees at of one of its temporary labor vendors, Abdullah Fahad Al-Mutairi Co., and found worker-paid recruitment fees, “substandard living accommodations, contract and wage irregularities, and delays in the resolution of worker complaints.”
Amazon confirmed through a series of audits in recent months that AFMCO had “remediated the most serious concerns,” including by upgrading housing accommodations.
It also “secured AFMCO’s commitment” that after workers’ employment ends at Amazon, the agency will pay them in line with their contracts and won’t move them to an accommodation that fails to meet Amazon’s standards. The report from The Guardian and other outlets detailed how workers whose contracts had ended were moved to even more squalid housing, and, lacking income, struggled to afford basic necessities such as food.
“Our goal is for all of our vendors to have management systems in place that ensure safe and healthy working conditions; this includes responsible recruitment practices,” Amazon wrote in the blog post.
Amazon’s labor record has been heavily scrutinized in recent years. Lawmakers, politicians and advocacy groups have zeroed in on its treatment of warehouse and delivery workers, arguing they’re exposed to unsafe working conditions. It faces multiple ongoing federal probes into its safety practices, and it has been fined by federal safety regulators for exposing workers to ergonomic risks in its warehouses.
Amazon has disputed regulators’ allegations, and has said it continues to invest in worker safety. It also has said it has made progress on lowering injury rates, including through introducing more automation in its facilities.
WATCH: Amazon’s worker safety hazards come under fire from regulators and the DOJ
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Alibaba‘s Hong Kong-listed shares surged on Wednesday to reach their highest point since 2021 after the company said it will invest more in artificial intelligence and rolled out new AI products and updates.
Shares of the company jumped over 6%, while its total gains year to date rose above 107%.
The tech giant plans to increase spending on AI models and infrastructure development, on top of the 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years it announced in February, Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu said Wednesday at Alibaba Cloud’s annual flagship technology conference.
“We are vigorously advancing a three-year, 380 billion [yuan] AI infrastructure initiative with plans to sustain and further increase our investment according to our strategic vision in anticipation of the [artificial superintelligence] era,” Wu said.
Alibaba shares surge after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending
So-called ‘artificial superintelligence’ refers to AI that would hypothetically surpass the power and intelligence of the human brain, with the hypothetical benchmark becoming a growing focus of major AI companies.
Alibaba also officially unveiled the latest version of its Qwen large language models — the Qwen3-Max — on Wednesday, along with a series of other updates to its suite of AI product offerings.
Wu highlighted that Alibaba Cloud is strategically positioned as a “full-stack AI service provider,” delivering the computing power required for training and deploying large AI models on the cloud through its own data centers.
“The cumulative investment in global AI in the next five years will exceed $4 trillion, and this is the largest investment in computing power and research and development in history,” he added.
A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.
The stock rose in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
- Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected
Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.
The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.
Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.
“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.
Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.
Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.
However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.
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