Several hundred Amazon employees are striking on Friday in Germany and the United Kingdom in the middle of Black Friday, one of the annual highlights of commerce, as part of a long wage dispute with their management. “More than 1,000 people went on strike (Friday) and at the height of the walkout this morning we had more than 800 people on the picket line at the same time,” said Stuart Richards, spokesperson for the British GMB union.
Knowing that the vast Coventry site “supplies other warehouses, there is no doubt for us that this strike will have a strong impact” on the deliveries of orders generated by Amazon during Black Friday, the Friday of promotions which follows the holiday American Thanksgiving, adds Stuart Richards. Around 2,300 people work at the Coventry site, according to GMB.
Biggest day of strike in German company history?
In Germany, the movement was launched early Friday morning following a call from the Verdi union for “better wages and working conditions”. It concerns five warehouses out of the twenty operated by Amazon in Germany – in Leipzig, Rheinberg, Dortmund, Bad Hersfeld and Koblenz, or in five regions – where packages are prepared before being routed. The unions believe that this Black Friday could be the biggest day of strike in the history of Amazon, a company notoriously resistant to unions, but the American giant thinks on the contrary that this walkout will not have a major impact on his activities.
According to an Amazon spokesperson in Germany, “customers can count on reliable and punctual deliveries as usual.” According to him, employees already benefit from “a fair salary and attractive social benefits”. The starting hourly wage within Amazon is 14 euros, according to the group, compared to 12 euros for the German “Smic”. More than half of Amazon employees in Germany have worked there for more than five years, the Amazon spokesperson added. The German union Verdi bases its demands on the collective agreement for the retail sector, to which the American refuses to join.
Amazon defends itself
“Only collective agreements offer binding protection to employees against corporate arbitrariness,” Silke Zimmer, head of retail at Verdi, said in a statement. The first strike at Amazon in Germany dates back ten years. The mobilization has since spread and made it possible to obtain better working conditions, according to the union.
In the United Kingdom, according to Stuart Richards, the American giant refuses to speak to the strikers, but the trade unionist assures that the social movement led by GMB for almost a year has led “Amazon to offer salary increases” to a large number of employees. According to GMB, this remains lower than the strikers’ demands, namely remuneration of 15 pounds per hour compared to around 12 pounds obtained so far. An Amazon spokesperson reached in the United Kingdom said that the group “regularly reviews its salaries to ensure that[ils offraient] competitive salaries and benefits in kind.”
He added that by “April [leur] lowest pay level” would have increased to 12.30 pounds or 13 pounds depending on the site, an increase of 20% over two years and 50% since 2018.