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
Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO:
Circle Internet Group shares jumped Tuesday after reporting its first quarterly earnings as a publicly listed company.
While charges related to the stablecoin issuer’s debut contributed to a second-quarter loss, it reported a 53% increase in revenue, driven by strong growth in stablecoins. Revenue rose to $658.1 million from $430 million in the same period a year ago.
Shares rose more than 7% in premarket trading. The stock has soared nearly 420% since it went public on June 5.
“The validation that we’ve seen in Circle, and the sentiment around circle is really about people understanding that the internet is colliding with the financial system,” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday. “Just like open internet, software, networks and utilities changed media, communications, retail and education, it’s happening in the financial system and stablecoin money and blockchains are foundational to that future.”
Circulation of USDC, the stablecoin Circle issues and manages, grew 90% from the previous year to $61.3 billion. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose values are pegged to that of another asset, usually the U.S. dollar.
Circle said it swung to a net loss of $482.1 million, or $4.48 a share, from earnings of $32.9 million, or breakeven per share, a year ago. The net loss included non-cash IPO-related charges of $424 million for stock-based compensation and $167 million to adjust the fair value of its convertible debt.
The company issued guidance projecting between $75 million and $85 million in other revenue for the rest of 2025, as well as adjusted operating expenses of $475 million to $490 million. It anticipates the amount of USDC in circulation will grow at a 40% compound annual growth rate through the cycle.
Circle also announced the forthcoming launch of a new blockchain called Arc, designed to be a network for stablecoin payments, FX, and capital markets applications. It will be integrated across Circle’s platform and services and will begin testing among developers in the fall.
Circle, led by CEO Jeremy Allaire, is one of the earliest companies in the crypto industry and the issuer of USD Coin, commonly referred to by its ticker, USDC. It’s the second largest stablecoin in the world, making up about 26% of the dollar-backed stablecoin market, behind Tether’s USDT, which makes up about 67%, according to CryptoQuant.
Traditionally used as bridge currencies for crypto traders, stablecoins today are benefiting from increased interest by banks and payment firms as the Trump administration rolls back restrictive Biden-era crypto policies in favor of more supportive crypto legislation, like the stablecoin bill known as the GENIUS Act, which Trump signed into the first U.S. crypto law last month.
“Since our IPO and since the GENIUS Act passed, the number of major financial institutions that are engaging with us in banking, payments, capital markets [and] so many categories has surged,” Allaire said. “We’re seeing this incredible interest in working with us, including from some of the names that people have thrown out there as maybe doing their own thing” by perhaps launching their own stablecoins.
Technology
Trump says he’s open to letting Nvidia sell a downgraded version of its most advanced chip to China
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, right, speaks alongside President Donald Trump about investing in America, at the White House in Washington, on April 30, 2025.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump has signaled that he’d be open to allowing Nvidia to sell a downgraded version of its most advanced artificial intelligence chip to China.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Trump said that he could make a deal with Nvidia if it could reduce the performance of its Blackwell system.
“It’s possible I’d make a deal” on a “somewhat enhanced — in a negative way — Blackwell” processor, Trump said. “In other words, take 30% to 50% off of it.”
Trump indicated that he will meet with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang regarding the Blackwell.
“On the Blackwell, I think he [Huang] is coming to see me again about that,” Trump said, adding that the Blackwell system is the “latest and the greatest in the world.”
Last month, Huang, who has lobbied Trump for access to the Chinese market after effectively being shut out, said he hopes to sell more advanced chips to China.
The flurry of activity around semiconductors comes after Nvidia and AMD agreed to a deal to pay the U.S. government a 15% cut of revenue from chip sales to China in exchange for export licenses. Trump said he initially asked for a 20% cut but that the number came down to 15% after Huang negotiated.
If the downgraded Blackwell chips were approved for export, it “would be a big deal going forward,” said Paul Triolo, partner and senior vice president for China at advisory firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group.
“The idea here is to addict China to substandard, or non-cutting edge technology, Triolo added.
Nvidia’s Huang has often touted the idea that if China is cut off from American chips then domestic tech firms like Huawei will fill the void. He has argued that U.S. chips should be sold in China so that Chinese firms are dependent on them when developing their AI technology.
Washington’s chip export regime has evolved over the past few years. Nvidia was blocked in 2022 from exporting its A100 and H100 chips to China — chips that are crucial for training large AI models. In 2023, the U.S. placed additional export curbs on more Nvidia semiconductors.
Chinese firms stockpiled these chips and have been using them to build their AI models. These chips were acquired legally and are still being used to train models, according to Triolo.
It’s not yet clear what kind of capabilities a downgraded Blackwell system for China would have and if it would be suitable for training more advanced models. In the meantime, Huawei is continuing to develop its Ascend series of processors, which it is trying to position as an Nvidia alternative.
“We are in sort of a transition point of running out of those stockpiles of earlier acquired Nvidia GPUs and hoping that Huawei’s new Ascend series of processors will be capable of replacing those but they are not quite capable of doing that yet,” Triolo said.
“Probably next year Huawei will have a new version of its 910 processors that will be more competitive with Nvidia.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike