Amazon, once a marginal web service has expanded into a powerhouse with considerable assets and global profits in the tens of billions of dollars. Media reports have recently exposed Europeans to exactly how Amazon is raking in profits: by exploiting workers.
In December, German broadcaster ARD aired an undercover report exposing the deplorable work conditions in which Amazon’s thousands of temporary workers languish. Most temp workers are migrants traveling to Germany from economically depressed nations. They come with promises of working for Amazon, but find lives where long hours, low wages, constant surveillance and intense performance pressure are the only things they get. Some employees have complained that security personnel are affiliated with right-wing extremists and have intimidated and discriminated against workers of color.
Starting in November, hundreds of Amazon employees in Germany staged job walkouts and strikes at Amazon’s logistic centers in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig, focusing on the issues of on-the-job injuries and mistreatment, which U.S. Amazon workers have long complained about. Amazon tried to quell dissent by promising to look into allegations. Union organizer Norbert Faltin told Deutsche Welle, “Something here must urgently change.”
Amazon Germany has 9,000 permanent and 14,000 temporary workers in the country. Many temps are hired for the holiday rush. Two days before Christmas, Amazon laid off hundreds of employees. Workers were under great pressure to process all orders in time. Although after the United States, Germany is the largest market for Amazon, with profits in the billions of dollars, Amazon Germany executives apparently decided to fire everyone right before the holiday.
With Amazon’s assaults on workers coming to light, many Germans have taken to social media and the streets to protest against the company’s actions. In the United States, a delegation from Germany’s Verdi union came to the company’s global headquarters in Seattle in mid-December to protest and demand action.
In solidarity, social justice music organization Music4Freedom has removed its content from Amazon in protest. Verdi union activists say strikes will continue in 2014, as workers demand fair wages and better work conditions.
