Strikes and blockades at Amazon sites in the US and Germany

Business

Amazon warehouse. Credits: Amazon newsroom

New York - On Thursday, a strike at several US and German sites of the American online retail giant Amazon began just a few days before the end-of-year holidays, to specifically demand wage increases.

The industrial action began at 11:00 GMT in the US on Thursday due to Amazon management's refusal to negotiate with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which affiliated with the powerful Teamsters organization (IBT) in June.

Seven US sites are affected, according to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, in New York, Atlanta (Georgia), California and Illinois. In New York, about 100 people gathered in front of Amazon's main warehouse in the Queens district, police told AFP, who said one person had been arrested, without giving a reason.

The site continued to operate but the rally "clearly slowed down" the flow of vehicles in and out, Tony Rosciglione, treasurer of the local Teamsters branch, told AFP. He estimated that 300 people took part in the picket line.

The movement involves Amazon employees who are members of the ALU, as well as truck drivers who are subcontractors of the company. The IBT estimates that 10,000 employees of the retail giant have joined the union. The ALU and the Teamsters have been demanding that Amazon open negotiations for several months to reach a new company agreement, which the company has so far refused to do.

The union decided to go on strike after setting a December 15 ultimatum, in vain. When contacted by AFP, the Teamsters did not specify how long the movement could last. "If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon's insatiable greed," IBT President Sean O'Brien said in the statement.

"We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do what is right for our members. They ignored it," the executive added.

Since its creation, the group had always opposed the creation of a union within it, before employees of a sorting center in the New York district of Staten Island voted in favor of the creation of an ALU branch in the spring of 2022.

Amazon tried to invalidate the vote, but the government's labor relations agency, the NLRB, rejected the case last August. No other ALU branches have been officially established at Amazon sites in the United States, but the union says it has members in several regions.

"For over a year, the Teamsters have sought to mislead the public by claiming to represent thousands of Amazon employees and drivers, when this is not the case," a spokesperson for the group told several American media outlets.

She considered that the communication around the strike movement was "a new attempt to sell a false story". Contacted by AFP, Amazon did not immediately respond. In Germany, at the call of the Ver.di union, some 450 of the 1,500 employees of an Amazon logistics center in Werne (west) also declared themselves on strike on Thursday, to obtain "fair working conditions". The union plans work stoppages at eight other sites by the end of the year and hopes to mobilize around 16,000 people.

Ver.di is demanding that Amazon employees be paid according to the collective agreement for the retail and mail order sector, which the group refuses to do. The movement has been going on for eleven years and has nevertheless managed to obtain wage increases and improvements in working conditions according to the German union. (AFP)

This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.FR. It was translated to English using an AI tool called Genesis and edited by Rachel Douglass..

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