Sacramento, CA – Today, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Western States Council applauded the Senate Judiciary Committee for passing AB 3262 by Assemblymember Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley). The legislation will level the playing field on consumer safety by holding online retailers like Amazon to the same standards brick and mortar California retailers must already meet.
“For 50 years California consumers have been able to rely on the fact that the products they are buying from retail stores won’t kill, poison, or maim themselves or their kids,” said Jim Araby, director of strategic campaigns, UFCW Local 5. “But with the increase in online shopping, our innovative safety-motivating liability will soon be irrelevant. Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer with more than half of the market, should not be able to shift the costs of easily preventable injuries to its customers when even the smallest California brick and mortar business competitors would be liable. UFCW members applaud the Senate Judiciary Committee for holding Amazon to the same standards as other businesses.”
AB 3262 has become crucial legislation to pass as consumers are buying more of their products from online retailers like Amazon without knowing these products are not backed up by the same protections as those purchased at a corner brick and mortar store. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 40% of everything bought online went through Amazon, accounting for 5% of all retail sales in the United States. Now, “Amazon said that net sales jumped 26% year over year to $75.5 billion as people flocked to its site.”[1]
“I trusted Amazon to stand behind their products, but they betrayed that trust,” said Angela Bolger, a victim of Amazon’s lax product liability who testified in support of the bill. “I stood up today to make sure that injuries like this don’t happen to anyone else. Life-altering events like mine will continue to occur as long as Amazon and other companies like it are allowed to evade legal liability. It’s too late for me, but it isn’t too late for lawmakers to fix this law so that this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 18, 2020
Contact: Jenna Thompson, 949.246.1620, [email protected]
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/15/this-breakdown-of-retail-sales-data-shows-why-amazon-is-leading-the- stock-market.html