Amazon Responds To Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: We Are 'A Leader On Pay' From First Day Of Employment

Retail giant Amazon on Monday responded to comments by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on ABC's Sunday program “This Week,” which criticized the company paying warehouse workers "starvation wages" and limiting their ability to access health care benefits.

"Amazon is a leader on pay at $15 min wage + full benefits from day one. We also lobby to raise federal min wage," the company posted on Twitter.

Jay Carney, Amazon’s head of communications, later tweeted that Ocasio-Cortez should change the minimum wage law, “instead of making stuff up about Amazon.”

Ocasio-Cortez had commented on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose billionaire status was of less concern to her than how company policies affected the warehouse workers.

She added her concern about Bezos was whether his “being a billionaire is predicated on paying people starvation wages and stripping them of their ability to access health care, and also if his ability to be a billionaire is predicated on the fact that his workers are taking food stamps.”

Carney tweeted, “@AOC is just wrong. Amazon is a leader on pay at $15 min wage + full benefits from day one.”

Carney's response conflicts with reports as late as 2018 when Amazon and Bezos came under fire for the company’s profits and CEO’s wealth that many argued were the result of company efforts to suppress employee unions, and a refusal to improve working conditions. In July 2018, the Guardian reported that at one U.K. Amazon warehouse, ambulances were called 600 times in three years. A reporter later went undercover and found workers routinely urinated in water bottles to avoid punishment for taking breaks.

Within the last two years and in at least four states, Amazon was a top 20 employer of workers dependent on food stamps. A 2017 corporate filing reported the median salary for employees at the time was $13.68 per hour for full-time employees, totaling $28,446 a year. At the same time, Bezos earned an equivalent amount every 9 seconds.

After a spate of similar press reports, Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour in October and since has advocated for other retail giants, such as Walmart, to do the same.

Amazon and Apple Inc. are the only U.S. companies to reach a $1 trillion valuation.

Amazon also is the second-largest private employer in the U.S., with 566,000 employees. Walmart is the largest private employer, with 2.3 million employees.