On Monday, thousands of workers at Amazon’s facilities in Germany went on strike, using Prime Day to protest against the company’s working conditions. The strikes officially started on Sunday evening, under the slogan “No more discount on our incomes.” These strikes are centered around salaries for Amazon employees in Germany, which workers confirmed weren’t enough to live on. Unions already demanded for collective bargaining agreements to be established within Germany’s retail sector. Over 2,000 people participated in the strike.
Orhan Akman, one of the protest organizers, as well as a member of Germany’s Verdi union, commented on the issue saying, “While Amazon throws huge discounts to its customers on Prime Day, employees lack a living wage.”
But Germany wasn’t the only place where Amazon workers were found protesting during the first day of the company’s famous Prime Day event. Warehouse employees in Shakopee, Minnesota were also protesting the company, with plans to strike for three hours at the start of the day shift and three hours at the start of the evening shift. The main goal of these long-hour protests were to pressure the company to offer employees safe and reliable jobs.
Minnesota employees confirmed that Amazon failed to convert temporary employees into full-time ones, while also adding that the company often sets productivity quotas that are unsafe for employees, proving that some of the warehouse workers have been over-worked. The company answered the complaints from its Minnesota warehouses, stating that it already offers those employees above-average wages that range from $16.25 to $20.80, plus benefits. Amazon also stated that it has held the same productivity requirements for that warehouse since November 2018, adding that 90% of those employees are hired as full-time workers.
Other employees from a warehouse in Portland, Oregon complained about sweltering heat and constant piercing alarms. And European Amazon workers were also found participating in protests. European workers already participated in protests against Amazon during last year’s Prime Day, including employees in Italy, The United Kingdom, Germany and Spain.
These protests conducted last year were about the long working hours imposed to employees at Amazon’s warehouses, which didn’t even include overtime bonuses for those same employees. Some workers state that conditions are so demanding that sometimes people collapse on the job from exhaustion. Germany and Italy employees also protested in 2017, during a Black Friday day, for similar reasons.
Last year, Amazon was named “one of the most dangerous places to work in the United States”, by the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (NCOSH), pointing out seven warehouse worker’s deaths at Amazon facilities in the US since 2013.
