The following report and call for solidarity was shared with the GMD mailing list by União Terra e Trabalho (UTT) on Amazon customer service workers in Ceará, Brazil, who earn less than the national minimum wage.

☆ português ☆

MINIMUM WAGE FOR AMAZON CUSTOMER SERVICE WORKERS IN CEARÁ, BRAZIL

October 19, 2026

In Ceará, in Brazil’s Northeast, more than 500 Amazon customer service workers earn about R$ 1,389 (US$ 279) a month, less than the country’s minimum wage of R$ 1,621 (US$ 326). In São Paulo, people doing the same job earn twice as much, according to the workers. The case is local, but the method is global: Amazon organizes work on a world scale and pays according to where the worker lives.

Internationalist report from União Terra e Trabalho (UTT, Land and Labor Union) to revolutionary syndicalist organizations and grassroots unions around the world. Amounts in Brazilian reais (R$) and US dollars, at R$ 4.975 per US$ 1 (October 6, 2026).

Who we are

União Terra e Trabalho (UTT) is a Brazilian revolutionary syndicalist organization. It was founded on October 18, 2026, building on years of grassroots work in states across several regions of the country. We organize the working class where it works and where it lives.

We are writing to working-class organizations because Amazon is a global boss that uses the borders between countries, and between regions of a single country, to pay less. Our response has to cross those borders too.

The case

Since 2024, Amazon has run a remote customer service center in Ceará, answering calls, chats and emails from customers all over Brazil (About Amazon). In 2026, a worker in the operation denounced the conditions in public videos. Her name is withheld here.

According to her account:

• there are more than 500 active workers in several cities across Ceará, and hundreds more who have already left;
• they work 36 hours a week and earn about R$ 1,389 a month;
• in São Paulo, the same job, with the same training and the same hours, pays about twice as much;
• every month most of them find errors in their pay slips, and one worker went almost two months without the correct wage.

What Amazon itself publishes confirms the picture. A 2025 job posting for Ceará offered R$ 1,280 when the minimum wage was R$ 1,518, that is, 84% of it, and required applicants to live in the state. Workers supply the room, the desk, the chair and the broadband connection.

The numbers

• Workers fall R$ 232 (US$ 47) a month short of the minimum wage.
• Paying the minimum would cost the company at least R$ 3,090 (US$ 622) per worker per year, including the 13th-month salary and vacation pay. For 500 workers, that is R$ 1.55 million (US$ 311,000).
• That equals a little more than two minutes of the US$ 77.7 billion net profit Amazon made in 2025 (Poder360).

That equals a little more than two minutes of the US$ 77.7 billion net profit Amazon made in 2025 (Poder360). UTT calculation.

One boss, many prices

Amazon organizes customer service as a single operation: same system, same training, same customers. What changes is the price it pays per hour, depending on where the worker lives. Within Brazil, Ceará is the cheapest place. Between countries, the pattern repeats.

The company’s justification is the cost of living. The numbers do not back it up: the basic food basket in São Paulo costs 18% more than in Fortaleza (R$ 922.51 against R$ 779.96, DIEESE, September 2026), but the reported wage is 100% higher. What does exist is a long-standing inequality between Brazil’s regions, which the company turns into profit margin: per capita income in Ceará is R$ 1,390, less than half of São Paulo’s R$ 2,956 (IBGE, via Diário do Nordeste, 2025).

How it works:

• Hire where wages are lowest. The job requires living in Ceará, even though the work is remote and serves the whole country.
• Tie the wage to the place. Brazilian law applies to remote work the rules and collective agreements of the place where the worker is assigned (CLT, art. 75-B, § 7). The same job ends up being worth less in the Northeast.
• Escape the sector. Amazon says it is a retailer, not a telemarketing company, and so escapes the collective agreements that guarantee more than the minimum wage for 36 hours.

Remote work could erase distance. The company does the opposite: it turns each worker’s home into a workstation and picks the cheapest labor without ever changing its address. It is the same logic that moves factories and call centers to wherever wages are lower. The answer is also the same: organize across the borders the boss uses to divide us.

Working less cannot mean earning less

Amazon relies on a guideline of Brazil’s Superior Labor Court (TST), OJ 358, which allows a proportional minimum wage for those who work fewer than 44 hours a week. But the 36 hours are not the company’s choice. They are the legal limit for call center work, set by a federal health and safety standard, NR-17, Annex II, which states: “without loss of pay”. The shorter working week exists to protect people who deal with the public all day, not to cut wages.

Brazil has just affirmed the same principle. On October 14, 2026, the Senate approved, by 75 votes to 1, the constitutional amendment that cuts the maximum working week from 44 to 40 hours with no reduction in pay (O Liberal). Amazon in Ceará does the opposite: fewer hours, lower pay.

Demands

UTT supports the workers’ demands:

1. No wage below the national minimum: R$ 1,621 for the 36-hour call center working week.
2. Recognition of the job as call center work, with all the health protections of NR-17: 6-hour shifts, breaks
   and protection against abusive targets.
3. Same work, same pay: an end to the gap between Ceará and São Paulo.
4. Correct payroll, paid on time.
5. No retaliation against those who spoke out.

What we ask of working-class organizations

• Take up this conflict as a cause of solidarity: public statements, letters and messages to Amazon in your countries.
• Translate and share this report in the languages and channels of each organization. We also have a short video in Portuguese, with the worker’s voice, which we can send to anyone who wants to subtitle it. The reverse could also be interesting.
• Bring the case to the international grassroots networks you take part in, such as Global May Day.
• Send us information on wages and working hours in Amazon customer service in your countries, so that we can document together how the company exploits the differences between regions and countries.
• Put us in touch with workers and grassroots unions in Amazon customer service and warehouses, to exchange organizing experience.

UTT contact: uniaoterraetrabalho@protonmail.com

SAME WORK, SAME PAY.
AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL.

Instagram video in portuguese: instagram.com