‘We want justice’: workers at Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia still waiting on financial redress

After a 2023 investigation by the Guardian and other outlets, Amazon said it would reimburse contract workers who had paid large sums to secure jobs at its warehouses in Saudi Arabia. Photograph: Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Warehouse laborers from Asia say the world’s second largest employer, Amazon, has failed to live up to its promises to compensate them for financial abuses tied to their work for the online retailer in Saudi Arabia.

In 2023, Amazon promised to reimburse recruitment fees to its contract workers from Asia who had been forced to pay large sums to secure jobs at the company’s warehouses in Saudi Arabia. Since then, Amazon has paid more than $2.6m in compensation to roughly 950 workers from multiple countries.