Amazon’s Labor Relations Under Scrutiny in Germany

Then Mr. Sauer and several other activists unfurled a banner demanding in a curious mix of German and English that Amazon, the American online retailing juggernaut, negotiate a union wage contract with its currently nonunion work force here. “Make Tarif Vertrag,” it said in fluorescent letters. Then the organizers marched toward the gates of the Amazon complex to deliver the results of an online petition drive supporting the union’s demands.

That brief bit of guerrilla theater was the latest skirmish in an escalating battle between ver.di, one of the largest unions in Germany, and Amazon, which employs 8,000 permanent workers at eight distribution centers in the country, one of the online retailer’s largest markets outside the United States. Deservedly or not, Amazon’s labor relations have lately come under intense scrutiny by German media.

The triggering event was a Feb. 12 broadcast by one of Germany’s two main public television networks of a documentary about the treatment of some of the 10,000 temporary workers that Amazon hired last year to cope with the holiday rush. Many of those workers were bused in from countries like Spain or Romania where jobs are scarce.

Aired on ARD, a publicly financed broadcaster considered left of center, the documentary even implied that Amazon used neo-Nazi thugs to keep workers in line. It showed a team of security workers hired by an Amazon subcontractor roughing up a camera crew outside the temporary workers’ quarters.

The broadcast has since inspired countless headlines, preoccupied pundits on Germany’s ubiquitous television talk shows and may even become an issue in national elections this autumn in which left-leaning Social Democrats will be challenging the government coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats.

The continuing furor raises the question of whether Amazon will be the latest big American company to run afoul of German labor laws, which provide much broader worker rights than in the United States.

Walmart abandoned Germany in 2006 following an array of setbacks that included a legal struggle with ver.di, which represents two million workers in service industries including retailing, hotels, food service and public transportation. The name is an abbreviation of Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft, or United Service Industries Union.

General Motor’s Opel unit, represented by the IG Metall union in Germany, has struggled for more than a decade to cut costs and stem losses in the face of strong worker resistance. Last week, Opel finally struck a truce with its employees that will allow it to close a factory in Bochum, Germany, in 2016 — but only after promising not to impose involuntary layoffs.

Now it seems to be Amazon’s turn to serve as a symbol for everything that many Germans resent about American-style management and so-called Anglo-Saxon capitalism. As an American company that has helped drive at least one German competitor out of business and makes heavy use of temporary workers, Amazon is a ripe target.

More flexible job regulations, introduced since 2005, have contributed to a plunge in unemployment. Germany’s 5.3 percent jobless rate is less than half the euro zone’s overall rate of 11.9 percent. But the changes are perceived by many Germans as creating a class of poorly paid workers with few protections. Amazon’s work force more than doubles every Christmas season when it hires an additional 10,000 temporary employees, many of them foreigners.

Amazon, which already pays above the union rate, has refused to negotiate with the ver.di union on wages or any other issue. But so far Amazon seems to be doing a better job than Walmart did in German public relations.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/business/global/amazons-labor-relations-under-scrutiny-in-germany.html?partner=rss&emc=rss