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Europe: Amazon workers to strike over working conditions & collective bargaining rights; co refutes allegations
Amazon’s European workforce is [...] taking action during the site’s biggest week of the year...
The strike is calling for “health and decent jobs,” along with benefits for all Amazon employees. They claim their “struggles against the abuses” of Amazon have gone ignored for too long.
Each nation has a particular grievance against Jeff Bezos’ behemoth.
- Polish workers say an anti-strike law has made it impossible to negotiate better salaries.
- German employees have been fighting for a collective bargaining agreementfor two years.
- In Italy, Amazon routinely hires contract workers who aren’t required to have benefits.
- Amazon’s Spanish leaders unilaterally imposed working conditions when a previous collective bargaining agreement expired.
- England and France have imposed demanding measures on time and efficiency, meaning workers have to process 300 items an hour and pee in bottles. Workers were also penalized for taking sick days and time off during pregnancies...
[W]orkers write: "...Only with a joint action at a European level will workers organize in those places where there is no union representation yet.”
”We don’t recognize these allegations as an accurate portrayal of activities in our buildings,” an Amazon spokesperson told Observer...