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Amazon Workers Strike In Germany As Christmas Orders Peak
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Washington Post reports that in Germany, Amazon's second-biggest market behind the United States, hundreds of Amazon.com workers went on strike just as pre-Christmas sales were set to peak, in a dispute over pay and conditions that has raged for months. Amazon, which employs 9,000 warehouse staff members in Germany plus 14,000 seasonal workers at nine distribution centers, says that 1,115 employees joined the strike at three sites. 'Amazon must realize it cannot export its anti-union labor model to European shores. We call on the company to come to the table and sign a global agreement that guarantees the rights of workers,' says Philip Jennings of the global trade union UNI. Verdi organized several short stoppages this year to try to force Amazon to accept collective-bargaining agreements ... The union says Amazon workers receive lower wages than others in retail and mail-order jobs and that other retailers pay overtime, but Amazon does not. 'What Amazon is doing is taking this American race-to-the-bottom roadshow to Germany and trying it out on our German brothers and sisters,' says David Freiboth. Amazon has defended its wage policies, saying that employees earn toward the upper end of the pay scale of logistics companies in Germany. Amazon also says it prefers to address employment issues with worker councils at individual sites rather than through negotiations with the union. Amazon says that there have been no delays to deliveries ... adding that Amazon uses its whole European logistics network during the Christmas period to ensure delivery times. A delegation of German workers was set to rally at Amazon's headquarters in Seattle along with U.S. unions. 'We're standing in solidarity with them. We are asking that Amazon respect the union there in Germany and negotiate in a way that is acceptable to Verdi,' says Kathy Cummings of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, which was also attending the protest in Seattle."
I sense a whole lot more of them in Amazon's (near) future...
coding is life
they're already doing it pretty heavily... this sort of thing... striking in the middle of a christmas season... it inspires drastic steps.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Naive little American, how's your minimum wage that just keeps shrinking and shrinking working out for your economy?
How apt. It's too bad Americans can't see this but Germans can.
Amazon must realize it cannot export its anti-union labor model to European shores. ... ... powered by lobbying machine KPMG Consulting, their shill Gerhard 'Let's wrap him in barbed wire and shoot him into the sun' Schröder, Hartz 4 cheap-flexible-workforce-supply powered by German taxpayer and so forth. ... There, fixed that for you.
As much as I love shopping for stuff at amazon, I'm totally with these strikers. Kick them where it hurts is my vote on this! Go, workers rights, go! Voll in die Eier! ... I hope this spills over into the US, a notable signal no-holds barred neo-con corporate-socialism disguised as free market capitalism desperately needs. Here and across the pond.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
And if Amazon doesn't want to pay them that sort of wage, they can get out of Germany. Nobody's forcing them to do business there.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_trap
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
The union says Amazon workers receive lower wages than others in retail and mail-order jobs and that other retailers pay overtime, but Amazon does not. Amazon has defended its wage policies, saying that employees earn toward the upper end of the pay scale of logistics companies in Germany.
Please note that the union sees the work as a mail-order job, where wages are higher.
Amazon thinks of it as a logistics job.
The union demands that Amazon recognize that the workers are in the mail-order business and pay accordingly.
What power has law where only money rules.
Seriously, if you don't want the work don't take it. Nobody forces you to work at Amazon
And, what the hell do you think a strike is, anyway?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
FTA....
1. Amazon says that it's pay is already near the top of the scale for logistic centers.
2. German Union Organizers have a problem with Amazon defining their distribution warehouses as "logistic centers" because it allows them to pay less than they would otherwise be required to.
Germany's strike is really a strike against Amazon fulfillment centers being allowed to classify themselves as "Logistics" centers. I'm curious what a better definition would be.
"Amazon also says it prefers to address employment issues with worker councils at individual sites rather than through negotiations with the union."
Yeah, I bet they do.
That's actually the reason we have unions in the first place, you know...
And, what the hell do you think a strike is, anyway?
Posted here already, so I can't give you mod points. But really, this American attitude is quite idiotic. Wages are always negotiated. Sometimes one side is more powerful, sometimes it's not. Walmart left Germany with its tail between its legs, and what a loss is it for the country! (If anyone thinks Walmart makes low prices, Aldi and Lidl do that a lot better while actually providing quality products _and_ paying their employees decent wages). Nobody will shed a tear if Amazon does the same.
It's sad that Amazon and other organizations in the US have succeeded so much in suppressing Unions.
I guess I'll do a little whistleblowing on a job I had with Joann Fabrics here in the US in one of their warehouses. It was during the Christmas season and they hired many temp employees from temp agencies to fill out their staff to meet orders. I was one of many "pickers", someone who hauls heavy stuff all day (20+ pounds, all day for 8 hours) in a very dusty, dirty warehouse. The air was thick with the dust, so much so that if I didn't wear a mask, I'd be hacking up phlegm within an hour. Most people working there didn't wear masks. One guy said that, because many of the boxes come from overseas, he gets a rash every fall that "is red and itches like crazy". It happens around the same time shipments come in.
They treated us pretty badly, running us hard, as hard as the people who were there for 20 years, and expecting us to perform at their pace or get canned. You had your stats told to you every day. When I started at a whopping $8.00/hr, I was told I'd get a $.25 raise after working for 600 hours. I wanted to laugh in the supervisor's face.
This is the way these warehouses are, generally. As a worker you are paid crap, treated like crap, expected to work insanely hard, and if your health suffers, oh well.
Why should a worker be grateful to their employers? They do work, they get paid for part of the value of their work (if they got paid the full value of their work, it wouldn't be profitable for their employer to hire them). While this might be a mutually beneficial business arrangement, I'm hard-pressed to see why the employer is doing the worker a favor or otherwise giving them something that they aren't earning, which is my usual standard for being grateful.
I am officially gone from
You don't understand how this works.
In Europe, *we don't want useless workers*. It is better that they are unemployed than that they do work that a robot should do.
Because of this strike, Amazon will accellerate their robot deployment, and that is *exactly* what Europe want.
I repeat, we don't want useless workers. The social security system requires workers to have a certain productivity, and this excludes certain low paid jobs.
Sorry, but those jobs should go offshore.
What many Americans don't understand is the true opportunity cost of a shitty job. You can either get your workforce to be productive through poverty as in the US, or you can get your workforce to be productive by eliminating unproductive jobs. The latter is what Europe wants to do.
I'm not sure why Amazon is being singled out here, except perhaps that it's a great example. The root problem is the greed of American-based companies and their total disregard or apathy towards their employees. The only people working for these parasitic companies that make money are the directors and C*s; their inflated value of what the "top people" do and the remuneration they award these so-called "top people" is outrageous. There really does need to a proper evaluation of how wages within a US-based company are distributed amongst the employees. Is a CEO really worth the same as 10000 (or more) "workers"? No, of course not. For a start, without workers there is no company and there is no profit because without workers the damn company can't even make a cent. And don't get me started about boards having to look out for their shareholders; if that was truly the case then proper and fair distribution of remuneration throughout the workers would be exactly the same (it's just the the C*s wouldn't earn 10 (or more) figure salaries whilst the minions earn 5 figure salaries, or maybe 6 if they're lucky.) The greed is sickening. The US culture is sickening. More and more countries are realising this. I fully support the workers; if they don't stand up, who will? It does seem that US workers seem to just accept this shit, but fortunately the rest of the world does seem to have more of a clue.
A friend of mine down on his luck and desperate for money worked last year for a few weeks at one of Amazon's fulfillment centers during their holiday hiring surge. Told me some stories that were Orwellian in the degree that people were "managed", with a ruthless efficiency that rivaled the mechanical processing of the products themselves. From the moment the trucks rolled in with the goods to the second they rolled out again, every moment of every item including the employees were tracked, itemized, stamped.... It was pretty unbelievable the conditions people were working in a Modern Times-like cog-in-a-machine way.
The pay was shit, the turnover ridiculous, and my friend like most people there didn't last very long. David Sederis or someone would have a field day with this.
Business is war, not a matter of "gratitude" because employment isn't a "gift".
Collective bargaining is the only way otherwise valueless workers have leverage. One ant is nothing, but an army of ants is very different.
Americans are carefully indoctrinated nowadays to lick corporate boots, no surprise since business owns the US. Mistakes by unions (who BTW were FORCED to get in bed with the Mob back when business utterly owned the politicians and the cops leaving them zero alternative) certainly hurt them, but that in no way invalidates the utility of collective bargaining. Some of us bothered to read more labor history than is taught in school. I suggest that to others so you can draw your own conclusions.
Workers are not the enemy, business is not the enemy, but to have an equitable relationship to BARGAIN each must have power. The only way workers can have power is collective bargaining unless they are specially skilled AND in short supply.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Their model is to cut all possible worker benefits to the bone; maintain a tax presence in only the friendliest, most cowed regimes while selling to people in better countries with functioning goverments and put a shiny face to the world in their shitty website.
Mail order (web shopping is mail order) is only useful in these circumstances - if you have a stay at home spouse, if you work at home, or for items small enough to fit through your door. Who wants to buy from a website for something big - who do I take it back to if it breaks? One of Amazon's "trusted partners"?
You can either get your workforce to be productive through poverty as in the US, or you can get your workforce to be productive by eliminating unproductive jobs. The latter is what Europe wants to do.
You're stealing a page from our playbook. What a shame we abandoned it 30 years ago. BTW, keep using it - it works very well.
P.S. I just realized "stealing a page from our playbook" is an American idiom that may not translate well. Oddly, I couldn't find a definition on the Internet, but roughly it means using an idea or approach that the other team or group used first.
~ "Right in the balls"
Or they could create separate staffing companies and hire temp workers with few regular workers.
But it is no wonder companies have so much anymosity towards employees when they pick the busiest time of the year to stop work. It completely smacks of the we want to hurt you vibe that is generally met with hostile return. I bet someone is attempting to find ways to fire the lot of the strikers without violating law.
Actually, things are pretty fine in Germany.
There is no minimum wage here in Germany, at least not currently.
There is a number of exploitation of cheap labour, mostly from east European countries, some say it's the only reason why our economy is the strongest in Europe. It's basically modern slavery, they earn 5€ per hour, which for them is a lot of money, but would be ridiculously low for German living costs including insurance, health care and other expenses.
Workers in adjacent countries, like France, lose their jobs because their parent companies rather have goods shipped to Germany and processed there. Then shipped back again, because it's way cheaper than processing goods locally in France, where the minimum wage is almost twice as much (9.4something€ per hour).
Our Lobbyist Kiss-asses, err, I meant to say politicians, fear that minimum wages will ruin the economy of Germany, will destroy jobs. Now that a minimum wage (around 8€) was promised to be introduced in 2016 from the coalition of Germany's upcoming government, we'll see how things will develop.
I didn't like my old job because the pay and benefits were unfair. Now I got a new job and the pay and benefits are good. That's what I think of unions. Oh and here's the kicker: the former company was doing terrible financially. A union would have made them go bankrupt.
The minimum wage is/was *supposed* to be for kids in or just out of high school, college students, etc.
The real cause of this, the point at which we jumped into the race to the bottom was in the 80's, when two things happend:
Union busting actually became popular. Reagan busting the air traffic controllers, and the unexpected level of approval from Americans, was a tipping point. Upward pressure on wages fell away across the economy.
Supply side economic policy has been the norm since (under Reagan) taxes on the super rich was basically cut in half.
Income inequality is the real devil here. The flatter the line is the better off everyone is, even the super rich. To fix it we need two things, upward pressure on labor wages, and an artificial friction to acquiring wealth. By that I mean the more wealthy you are the harder it is to get more wealthy. A progressive tax system does this, but maybe there are other methods.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Americans are carefully indoctrinated nowadays to lick corporate boots, no surprise since business owns the US.
Do you live in the US or have you just been told this? I grew up in Texas which is pretty conservative and the education I received was that unions where the worker's hero. My daughter receives the same information from her schools. I am trying to recall a recent movie (outside of Atlas Shrugged) or show where a big business was the hero and the unions were the bad guys.
... I've got to say: the American posters on here that are largely big-company bootlickers are really pathetic. I think that Free Market Capitalists are almost as bad a Religionists in that you both believe in fairy tales and you want to be on your knees "worshipping" said fairy tale.
I don't respond to AC's.
Except that is not what they are saying at all. They provide much better educational opportunities than we do in the US, and education increases productivity just as much as experience. They also didnt say they let the unproductive people stay unproductive, their social services require they become productive, or they are thrown out, keeping a steady supply of productive workers.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
So in other words you subsidise underpayment of staff by big business. You reward businesses for undervaluing their workers.
They take the low-end jobs that are still around. The world still needs telephone sanitizers.
Of course, there are few folks who actually "can't" graduate, given a good enough support structure. University becomes a lot easier when you don't have to also work full-time to pay for the classes.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Amazon will implement whatever workaround is necessary to remain the internet's Walmart
I don't know if you wanted to be funny, but in Germany, Walmart came, saw and went home beaten. They never found the leverage to implement their business model in Germany, never became competitive, and finally gave up.
But it is no wonder companies have so much anymosity towards employees when they pick the busiest time of the year to stop work.
Of course they did: If you're going to strike, you pick the time that will have the most impact. Just like how a corporation tends to have lockouts and contract negotiations when there is high unemployment in the region near the factory.
As far as the animosity towards employees, the fact is that workers and management have an inherently adversarial relationship: The worker wants to maximize the amount they are paid for the work they do, and minimize the work they have to do to earn it. Management wants to maximize the amount of work performed, and minimize how much they have to pay to get it done. To pretend that these are other than diametrically opposed is just plain silly. And if you feel thoroughly dedicated to your job, know that management loves people like you because you'll work those 16-hour days without complaining or demanding any kind of compensation.
I am officially gone from
Lol.. you have so many misconceptions it isn't funny. The minimum wage was created to curb minority companies under bidding bloated established white companies. It created a base level that barred those willing to work for less from taking well paying jobs. Mandating a prevailing wage in government contracts was much the same. In more modern times, the minimum had been used to stealth tax increases as both the employee and the employer has taxes associated with pay that does not get refunded.
Second, union busting has never been popular in recent times. People started seeing unions in a negetive light when Reagan busted the air traffic controllers specifically because they walked off the job and left people in danger in planes in the air with no one directing their movements in a reletively tight airspace. That is when people started seeing that 90% of what unions were needed for was already encoded into law and their remaining usefulness was mostly about greed of income. But what really killed the unions was downsizing in the 80s where the bloat was consolidated and made efficient. This lead to companies poping up that could compete far better than most established union shops and they took an even deeper hit with the offshoring craze that pitted union wages against third world wages. Outside of the traffic controllers showing how wreckless the pursuit of greed can be, it had little to do with the fall of the unions.
As for income inequality, the majority of the income being considered too large is performance based. It is stock options, bonuses and so one attached to a base pay. It was originally done this way in order to shirk pay obligations if the executive failed to properly run the company (with some tax strategy). The problem is it an incentive to keep wages low and stagnant. It isn't so much the inequal amounts that is the effective problem but what makes those amounts so inequal. Now i know you are looking at fixing it meaning increasing worker pay but the realities will likely be decreasing exec pay and simply giving them prefered stock where they get the same but it is counted as dividends separate from their pay.
The only way to fix this is to tie employee wages to the same or similar bonus structures. This way, even if the ceo makes 20,000 times more than the base hourly pay for workers, those workers get rewarded the same. I have seen people who actually do get profit sharing earn as much as 2 times thier anual salary fron the profit. Mostly it seems to be one third to two thirds more.
I had horrible low paying jobs at times. If there are less horrible or better paying jobs available you can move to them. If not, well, it's nice to have a job when you need one.
The people complaining about the horrible, just horrible conditions at Amazon would appear to have never had to work a low-paid, low-skill production-line job.
I did that for a while when I was at school, and would have switched to Amazon without a second thought if they'd been around at the time.
When the marriage is based around resentment and getting one over the other, it is often best to just end it with a divorce. This is no different, it is just an unhealthy relationship and breads discontent.
Just an observation. No saying one is right or left or anything. Just that it carries a lot of negetive baggage with it.
Don't confuse unions with onions. Onions are the round things that make you cry. Unions are actually good - because of them, people no longer work 16 hours a day, and there is no child labor.
The maximum income tax in Denmark is 51.7%, but there are a lot of ways to decrease the taxed part of the incomes (e.g. union membership, transportation costs, debt, pension savings) so the actual average tax rate on income is in the mid 30s.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
"But AC!" you cry, "Bettering myself and my position is hard! I'd have to like, study, and not have time to sit around mindlessly consuming mah cable TV while I've got a giant dildo up my asshole!"
Baaaaaw.
Sigh.
Yes, rest of the world, we really do have people so stupid they literally believe this kind of crap. Not only that, those same wastes of flesh piss and moan endlessly about "class warfare" anytime someone tries to make a change that would better the lives of our nation's poorest citizens.
On behalf of all thinking, reasonable Americans, I would like to apologize for this douche-muncher and his ilk. Let's all pray he's too busy staring in a mirror and wanking to ever go out and vote.
While this is what is the core of the conservative mindset it by no means is limited to the US so there's no need to apologize.
If the mainland European conservative parties said in clear terms that they believe in an elite and that everybody is equally able and should strive to become part of that elite then they would lose each and every election. That myth has been dispelled. Hard graft by no means does guarantee you a living anymore. In fact if you wokr as hard as your parents did you will still not be able to maintain their standard of living.
Germany is at the moment in a very awkward position. While the unions had managed to negotiate reasonable wages the big employers manage to dodge their agreements by hiring third-party service providers who treat their people like crap. There have been cases where those outsourcers lured people from Spain to Germany, housed them in decrepid buildings and paid them next to nothing. Things like these are very unpopular here in Germany. A retailer made the news that they treated their employees like crap and suddenly had to face reduced sales because the customers stayed away. I know of a WalMart in Germany that hardly has any customers due to the bad image they have. Things like these go against the grain of a majority of the populace. The conservative parties in Germany win elections by not promoting their ideas of having and relying on an elite but by being perceived as reliable.
The Ayn Randers would be met with disbelief if they tried to be honest and vocal in Germany. There is a reason why a party that has been part of parliament for the whole existance of the modern German democracy has been shamefully ousted this year and they got very little sympathy.
20 minutes into the future
OMG. If that is what Europe really wants, then they can keep it. Maybe they don't realize that workers don't magically become "productive" out of the womb. Nor do they when someone hands them a diploma. Productivity increases with experience.
Well, I guess someone should point that out to all the US corporations who consider their over-30 programmers to be out-of-code commodities to be disposed of.
Indeed. Like I say, unions are a very good mirror of the approaches of the corporations they're standing against, good and malevolent.
Very true. I think there is a happy medium to be found. At times the pendulum swings too far towards the union and others too far toward the company. I don't see how anyone could say that unions are the problem in North America today. They have been largely gutted and are fading away.
I have never been a part of a union and probably never will be in my profession -- but I still appreciate the hours, holidays, health and safety etc. unions have given us over the years.
The interesting thing is that whenever I point this out people talk about how unions are no longer needed because all these rights are in the laws now. I always have to point out that things like right to work laws etc. obviously mean that the law isn't static and these rights need to be defended or we're headed back towards 19th century robber baron conditions.
Useless people shouldn't have to work?
Working people shouldn't have to pay taxes to support them.
Are you suggesting just shooting them in the head?
In the EU the seller has to handle all issues and warranty claims, for 2 years.
If it breaks, the company pays a local repair guy to come to my shop to fix it.
If I know exactly what I want, what's the point in paying more at a local store? If I need some assistance though, then buying local makes sense.
That's not right. Our expression is "(Aber) Man hat schon Pferde vor der Apotheke kotzen gesehen." A translation might be "(But) Horses have been seen vomitting in front of a pharmacy". It's a phrase that's added after describing a very unlikely situation, which may nonetheless happen, e.g. "Given X and Y, I doubt that Z will happen ... but horses have been seen ..."
I just hope they continue to stand up to the unions. The time for unions is long in the past, and they do nothing but distort the market now.
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
Very funny. You think it's still 1950.
Vocational schools are still very much alive and kicking in today's world, despite what you may have been led to believe.
No User Serviceable Parts Inside was the motto of the last half of the 20th Century. Now it's more like Ending is better than Mending.
OK, so maybe your laptop doesn't have any "user serviceable parts," a contention with which I still beg to differ, but you know what does? Your vehicles, buildings, HVAC systems, plumbing, electrical generation, transmission, and distribution, factory robots (like the one that made your laptop), et. al.
Believe me, so long as technology exists, there will be a need for people who know how to fix it.
The old time TV/Radio repair shops are virtually extinct. Last one I saw did primarily replacements on projector bulbs.
A guy in my town opened an LCD/LED/Plasma repair joint last year, and has to continually hire new people to keep up with demand. Kinda seems like the industry is evolving more than "going extinct."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The people complaining about the horrible, just horrible conditions at Amazon would appear to have never had to work a low-paid, low-skill production-line job.
Tell me about it. I worked a summer before college in a recycling plant. Awful, dirty, and hazardous place. Some of the people there were doing it full time for a living. It impressed on me why I was going to college.
If they don't want a particular benefit, whether in general or just Denmark's particular implementation of it, the American can choose to save the money or find an alternate benefit more to his or her liking, while the Danish citizen has no choice but to pay the tax and accept whatever benefits the state chooses to provide.
Ah, the old "freedom of choice" argument. For example, Americans are free to get medical care or insurance that they can't afford, or to be in debt for the rest of their lives to get a college education. Now that's freedom!
I recall the Bill of Rights listing many important freedoms, but I don't recall the "right to get screwed" being in there.
In the eventual situation that all non-creative jobs are fully automated, what does the rest of the population do? Only a subset of the entire population is creative enough to do art, solve issues, or come up with truly novel ideas. The other 90% of the population will have no work available. Unemployment will slowly go up over time. You best start planning for welfare or finding something for them to do.
We can't have 90% of the population being effectively "poor". They need to have money and need to be at least content and preferably happy and healthy, otherwise society will collapse.
Working people shouldn't have to pay taxes to support them.
That's begging the question. We could all just agree to live in a society together, where those who can will do, and those who can't will do whatever they can with the rest of society all helps to ensure that everyone, collectively, has a good life.
Of course, that's looking suspiciously like Communism, and that doesn't mesh well with politicians' us-vs-them polarized view of the world.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.