From Berlin to Tokyo (nd-aktuell.de)
In Berlin, too, there were protests against the lousy working conditions at Amazon.
Photo: AdoraPress/M. Golejewski
At this year’s Black Friday, not only did Amazon shop, there were also strikes and protests against the controversial online giant. “Amazon is not a good neighbor,” read in full letters on the Amazon Tower in Berlin-Friedrichshain last Friday evening, the one currently on Warschauer Strasse is being built. »Make Amazon Pay«, »The Tower Must Go« and »Solidarity with Amazon strikers worldwide« were other slogans that more than 100 activists projected onto the tallest building in Berlin in the dark. So they wanted to show their support for the struggling Amazon workers.
The action was part of a global day of action called Make Amazon Pay against the online giant, best known for its anti-union practices. Actions took place in more than 30 countries on this day. The day of action was organized by UNI Global Union, the global federation of service sector unions, and Progressive International, a coalition aiming to unite progressive forces around the world. The Progressive International is supported by an advisory board that includes US intellectual Noam Chomsky, Indian activist Aruna Roy and Greek politician Yanis Varoufakis.
“We’ve renamed Black Friday Make Amazon Pay-Day for a reason,” said UNI General Secretary Christy Hoffman. “On this day, we want to denounce Amazon’s many attacks on workers and their union organization.” The Make Amazon Pay campaign launched in November 2020 and is now supported by over 80 trade unions, civil society organizations and environmentalists, including Amazon Workers International, Oxfam and Greenpeace.
In Germany and France alone, the German service union Verdi and the French trade union CGT went on strike in 18 warehouses. According to Monika Di Silvestre, who is responsible for trade union work at Amazon at Verdi, it was very important “to celebrate this year’s day of action together, because you can’t meet a global corporation like Amazon alone locally, regionally or nationally”.
For example, strikers from the Koblenz site visited their colleagues in France on the day of action; Conversely, employees from the Metz site where the strike was going on were in Koblenz. Amazon employees in Germany want collective bargaining security and good jobs. They have been arguing since 2014 – with the first notable successes. Hourly wages have increased and health protection has partially improved. But none of these successes has been secured with a collective agreement.
At the rally in Berlin, Boris Bojilov from the Verdi district of Berlin-Brandenburg spoke about the current attempts at organization. So far, the union has only achieved a higher degree of organization in the warehouses such as in Bad Herzfeld. Recently, however, there have also been attempts to organize the first of the small distribution centers where many people with a migration background work on the basis of temporary employment contracts.
This already leads to the first successes. In June, for example, Verdi succeeded in founding the first works council at a participation center in Wunstorf, Lower Saxony. Works council elections are now also taking place in Berlin-Mariendorf. Trade unionist Bojilov hopes “that next year’s Black Friday rally in Berlin will also include strikers.”
In the last few days, other piquant details about the work regime at Amazon have become known. There was one death at the Leipzig site in August of this year. The employee died of health problems, there was no accident at work. According to the Correctiv research platform, the shift, rescue workers and police were on duty for hours. Cardboard was only used to protect the body of the worker. “If I had been in her place,” one employee is quoted as saying, “I would have stopped working in shifts immediately.” Correctiv also published research describing the dangerous working conditions of truck drivers in Amazon’s supply chain, who suffer from irregular shifts, excessive driving hours and irrelevant sleeping places.
Actions against the group also took place in the United States, including at Amazon headquarters in Seattle and at the home of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in New York. In India, according to the campaign, thousands of workers and street vendors have demonstrated in over 20 cities, including in front of the Parliament in New Delhi. In Japan, liberated workers from the recently formed Amazon Workers Union protested outside Amazon Japan’s Tokyo headquarters.
In Bangladesh, thousands of garment workers in Amazon’s supply chain demanded that their unions be recognized and that the company sign the Bangladesh Accord for Safer Workplaces. “Garment workers like the ones I represent work hard to fill Amazon’s coffers, often without us even being recognized as Amazon workers,” said Nazma Akhter, president of the Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation. “At work, we are sexually harassed and bullied by management when we try to unionize against this violence and for better wages and working conditions.”