exclusive
The Federal Council wants to improve the working conditions of parcel carriers. But the push threatens to come to nothing. Internal papers now show how Amazon encourages the exploitation of drivers.
Mustafa* has bad memories of his time as a deliverer for Amazon parcels. He delivered up to 300 packages a day. “I bore like a slave from morning to night.” At the end of the month, his boss, a subcontractor from Amazon, cheated him out of wages.
Because similar things often happen in the logistics industry, the Federal Council wants to tighten the Parcel Courier Protection Act. A test request to the federal government deals, among other things, with a ban on subcontracting. However, with one exception: Those who pay collective wages should be allowed to remain.
This is a limitation with pitfalls, says Stefan Sell, Professor of Economics, Social Policy and Social Sciences at the Koblenz University of Applied Sciences. “Collective wages for the parcel deliverers, that should also be checked.” However, the authorities are unable to do so. This proposal will therefore hardly help the parcel drivers. Trade unionists share this assessment. Stricter controls are also possible without changing the law. The Federal Ministry of Labor announced that it would examine the initiative of the state chamber.
Extensive specifications for subcontractors
In the case of the mail order company Amazon, research by SR, “Correctiv” and “Nordsee-Zeitung” for the first time how the industry giant favors the precarious situation of parcel drivers. Documents and contracts show that the specifications for subcontractors are extensive. Industry experts consider their economic scope to be small.
Amazon publicly promises a profit of 60,000 to 140,000 euros per year. For 60,000 euros, a subcontractor would have to have 20 delivery vans in use for twelve months. He would have to handle essential items from car leasing to accounting software and insurance under specified conditions via Amazon contractual partners.
And he would depend on getting enough routes. Because Amazon does not give a guarantee for a certain number of tours, as the group itself emphasizes.
Economist Sell considers the numbers to be “full-bodied promises” that the subcontractors usually don’t manage. “The pressure is then really unfiltered, passed on unchecked to your own employees.” According to Sell, exploitation of drivers is “core to Amazon’s strategy”.
Several subcontractors also see it that way. One says: “You cannot run a successful Amazon subcontractor with decent working conditions.”
But it is also true that Amazon does not force subcontractors to act dishonestly. The mail order company reports that the high number of delivery partners who have been working for Amazon for several years proves “the possibility of long-term economic success”. Amazon requires its partners to comply with the law, “especially with regard to fair wages and reasonable working hours”.
“Skillful gag contracts”
But employment lawyers also consider the contracts to be problematic. These severely restricted the entrepreneurial freedom of subcontractors, says law professor Manfred Walser from Mainz University of Applied Sciences. For example, Amazon can change existing contracts on its own and without consent and is given access to payslips, for example, at its behest.
The Bremen specialist lawyer for labor law, Frank Ewald, speaks of “very clever and complicatedly worded gag contracts”. Amazon shifts the economic risk and responsibility for the drivers to the subcontractors “without relinquishing control over the execution of the work”. Ewald sees evidence of unauthorized temporary employment.
“We reject that claim,” Amazon replies. The delivery partners could “conduct their business at their own discretion”. The statement of a subcontractor sounds different: “Amazon knows and controls everything about my company. I can basically only decide who to hire and who to fire.”
* Name changed