From Reuters:
Workers at Amazon logistic centers in Germany and Spain staged strikes on Friday, walking off the job on Black Friday, the discount spending spree that kicks-off the start of the crucial Christmas shopping season.
Amazon Germany said around 620 workers were participating in the strikes at its Bad Hersfeld and Rheinberg facilities but the majority of employees were continuing to work and there was no impact on customer orders.
Germany’s Verdi services union had called for Amazon workers to strike for 24 hours until midnight on Friday, demanding better pay and labor contracts that guarantee healthy working conditions.
. . . .
Amazon Germany said its jobs offered competitive pay and comprehensive benefits from the first day of employment.
Staff in Germany earn a starting salary of 10.78 euros ($12.23) per hour and earn on average a monthly wage of 2,397 euros after two years.
Workers at Amazon’s biggest warehouse in Spain, San Fernando de Henares, walked off the job on Friday and will also strike on Saturday. Unions said between 85 and 90 percent of staff were taking part in the industrial action.
Amazon Spain said the figures did not reflect reality and a majority of employees were processing orders.
Link to the rest at Reuters
They don’t even realize that striking on the busiest shopping day achieves nothing. The computers keep on taking the orders as normal.
To achieve anything they’d have to strike to disrupt shipping, which means striking straight through the holiday season. And with Amazon’s distributed logistics even that might not even move the needle. It’s the EU customs union, after all, so Amazon can ship from warehouses in other, non-striking areas. And there’s still time to staff up in the non-striking warehouses.
“Grand gestures” with no bite are just grandstanding.
Odds are the ones “on strike” were out bargain shopping. 😉
And Amazon knows where to swing the ax when the holiday shopping is over and they can drop the unneeded bodies.
Kids these days … Why I can remember when strikes could last months and they didn’t go back until they got what they thought they wanted – of course back then the unions gave the workers back some of those union dues they’d been collecting so those workers could eat/pay bills while on strike.
As someone else here is sure to say: ‘Workers are like widgets, when they stop working you replace them.’ 😛
These workers are indeed like widgets. When they stop working widgets replace them.
Reuters didn’t even cover the kicker: the strikers’ slogan for the walk out is “We are not robots!”
https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-workers-in-europe-mark-black-friday-with-we-are-not-robots-protests/#
And they’re right.
Robots don’t unionize or require perks or go on strike.
And the (smaller group of) techs and mechanics needed to maintain them tend to be salaried rather than hourly workers. Less incentive to unionize.
I suspect KIVA is going to be getting new orders to supply Spain and Germany warehouses with added “staff”.