The series of strikes at mail order company Amazon, reported in the June newsletter, continue as workers fight for collective bargaining rights. Amazon currently employs around 9000 workers in Germany, most of which have short term contracts or work via temporary work agencies. The company has refused to enter collective bargaining negotiations with its employees or to classify them as retail employees, which would bring the workers under the sector wide collective agreement applied by the other mail order companies. With the dispute on wages at Amazon as a striking example the NY Times reports on the antipathy to organised labour among imported American-style business practices. Amazon has been criticised for its working conditions in the United States - but not nearly to the same extent as in Europe. Amazon’s tactics, along with its refusal to even enter into talks with the unions, created an image of being against its own workforce that could hurt it in the long run.
English: http://www.uniglobalunion.org/Apps/uni.nsf ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/05/business/workers-of-amazon-divergent ...
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.