Around 13,000 Etsy sellers are set to go on strike from today (April 11) in protest of a 30 percent fee increase the online selling platform will now be charging them.
Etsy is said to be increasing the transaction fee from five per cent to 6.5% despite it only having just gone up in 2018 from 3.5 percent.
However since its announcement, people have taken to social media in their thousands to share their anger with one seller creating a petition which has almost 50,000 signatures to date.
READ MORE - Morrisons shoppers hail 'incredible value' cheeseboard costing less than a tenner
And because of the strike, sellers are asking people not to buy from them.
Melonia Vincent, an Ohio-based seller said in her petition that "individual crafters, makers and small businesspeople may be easy for a giant corporation like Etsy to take advantage of" however "as an organised front of people, determined to use our diverse skills and boundless creativity to win ourselves a fairer deal, Etsy won’t have such an easy time shoving us around."
She continued: "We’re going on strike on April 11 to call on Etsy to hold itself accountable to sellers and buyers. Sellers will put their shops on vacation mode in protest. Buyers can show support by agreeing to boycott Etsy from April 11-18."
In explaining why the petition and its signatures were important the campaign creator said: "Etsy was founded with a vision of "keeping commerce human" by "democratising access to entrepreneurship." As a result, people who have been marginalised in traditional retail economies -- women, people of colour, LGBTQ people, neurodivergent people, etc. -- make up a significant proportion of Etsy's sellers. For many of us, Etsy makes up our main source of income.
"But as Etsy has strayed further and further from its founding vision over the years, what began as an experiment in marketplace democracy has come to resemble a dictatorial relationship between a faceless tech empire and millions of exploited, majority-women craftspeople.
"Unlike employees or tenants in traditional retail marketplace settings, Etsy can fire or evict us at any time, for any reason, with no recourse. Our fees (the rent we pay as tenants of Etsy's marketplace) can be unilaterally raised any time Etsy feels like it. Etsy can and does withhold payments to sellers for months at a time, without any process for appealing or speaking with a representative of the company.
"Even though it's the hard work of Etsy's sellers who've made it the massively successful company it is today, we have fewer rights and less of a voice in our workplaces than ever.
"It doesn't need to be this way! Etsy can be a successful and profitable company while still treating its sellers fairly and ethically. Etsy can be the force for good it initially set out to be. And together, Etsy sellers and the buyers who support us can show hyper-exploited platform workers everywhere that there's a better way, if we unite in solidarity and work together to achieve it!"
A spokesperson for Etsy told us: “Our sellers’ success is a top priority for Etsy. We are always receptive to seller feedback and, in fact, the new fee structure will enable us to increase our investments in areas outlined in the petition, including marketing, customer support, and removing listings that don't meet our policies.
"We are committed to providing great value for our 5.3 million sellers so they are able to grow their businesses while keeping Etsy a beloved, trusted, and thriving marketplace.”
