On-line retailing large Amazon refused to ship a consultant to a European Parliament listening to on Tuesday (23 January) on working situations in its mega-warehouses.
The listening to was held following considerations raised by staff and commerce unions in Germany and Poland.
However the US large determined to not ship anybody to signify them, prompting fast and widespread criticism from MEPs.
“Amazon has utterly ignored all our efforts,” rightwing Polish MEP Elżbieta Rafalska (European Conservatives & Reformists) mentioned in the course of the listening to.
The parliament’s committee shared a casual invitation to Amazon on early November, and an official one on 20 December.
In a letter seen by EUobserver to the committee’s chairman, liberal Renew Romanian MEP Dragos Pislaru, Amazon insisted that it didn’t have a senior consultant out there “at quick discover” for an alternate of views. The letter, nevertheless, was dated 11 January.
“I believe this complete reply letter simply exhibits that Amazon does not actually take a place on board in any respect,” Rafalska added.
An Amazon spokesperson informed EUobserver that the US retailer large is prepared to welcome MEPs for a go to, because it has performed prior to now, and that they are going to proceed to work to discover a mutually handy date for a go to “as quickly as attainable”.
Their letter highlights one other attainable purpose for not attending the assembly, EUobserver understands — arguing that the listening to seems to focus solely on Amazon, which the corporate says accounts for lower than one % of the full variety of workers within the transport and logistics sector within the EU.
“A radical exploration of those subjects could be enhanced by the participation of different corporations, related organisations within the subject, and probably lecturers to make sure an goal and complete understanding,” James Waterworth, Amazon’s director of EU public coverage wrote in his letter to the employment’s committee.
Lower than €6 per hour
The corporate at the moment employs round 150,000 individuals within the EU, and the state of affairs in its warehouses worries commerce union representatives.
“When the worker doesn’t meet the targets set upfront, that are solely evaluated for one week, he/she will get a unfavorable analysis,” Agnieszka Mróz, an activist and commerce union organiser working in an Amazon warehouse in Poland, informed MEPs, noting this analysis can’t be appealed and {that a} employee could be advisable for dismissal over such an computerized analysis.
Mróz additionally spoke in regards to the poor working situations and the issue of happening strike, warning that the unions usually are not concerned in wage negotiations and that salaries usually are not excessive sufficient for staff to dwell on.
“It is not even €6 an hour earlier than taxes,” Mróz identified.
An analogous state of affairs was described by Corinna Gross of Ver.di, the second-largest commerce union in Germany.
After 10 years of struggles with Amazon and common strikes, the corporate nonetheless refuses to signal ten collective agreements for good and wholesome work, she mentioned.
“Folks nonetheless get much less cash than they’d underneath the collective settlement,” Groß emphasised. “It is all very arbitrary”.
In line with Amazon, its staff are paid above the minimal wage in all EU international locations, even “as a lot as six % greater”.
“The rationale why Amazon invested a lot in Poland is extra due to a budget labour, nevertheless it’s additionally due to the weak point of the labour legal guidelines,” the Polish activist informed MEPs.
€32m high quality
The listening to got here on the identical day as Amazon was fined €32m over an “overly intrusive” surveillance system used to observe workers efficiency at its warehouses in France.
The French watchdog (CNIL) mentioned in a press release that a number of thousand workers had been affected by the surveillance techniques, which didn’t adjust to the EU’s Normal Knowledge Safety Regulation (GDPR), and described the high quality as “nearly unprecedented”.
“That is what Amazon did not need us to see after they did not enable us to return and examine the services,” mentioned French Left MEP Leïla Chaibi.
Following calls to analyze anti-union repression and poor working situations, MEPs had been on account of go to Amazon’s warehouses in Germany and Poland earlier than the 2023 Christmas break — however the firm determined to cancel these plans. For a second time.
After an absence of engagement with the parliament’s representatives, Chaibi and another MEPs on the committee advised sending an e mail to the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, asking that Amazon’s lobbyists be banned from the constructing “because of the lack of respect they’ve proven for our establishment”.
