Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) workers at warehouses in the U.S., U.K., Poland, and other countries including Spain and Germany have downed their tools on Prime Day to demand better pay and improved working conditions.
In Germany, 2,000 workers started striking late Sunday under the motto “No more discount on our incomes.” German labor union Verdi staged the protests at Amazon sites in Rheinberg, Werne, Graben, Leipzig, and other locations including Bad Hersfeld and Koblenz.
“While Amazon fuels bargain hunting on Prime Day with hefty discounts, employees are being deprived of a living wage,” said Verdi retail specialist Orhan Akman.
Last week, workers in a fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota announced plans to strike on Amazon’s busiest shopping event of the year over what they claimed are poor working conditions and productivity quotas.
“The speeds that we have to work are very physically and mentally exhausting, in some cases leading to injuries. Basically we just want them to treat us with respect as human beings and not treat us like machines,” William Stolz, a picker at a warehouse in the Shakopee warehouse in Minnesota was quoted as saying by the BBC.
In the U.K., workers will begin demonstrating today and team up with their Spanish counterparts at a Rugeley warehouse on Friday. Last year, workers in Germany walked off the job on Prime day, while close to 1,800 Amazon workers in Spain protested as the e-commerce giant came under fire for the way it treats its workers.
Prime Day 2019 officially kicked off on Monday, July 15 and will last a full 48 hours, which is 12 hours more than last year. The online shopping event is expected to feature over a million deals for Prime members globally, plus select deals at Whole Foods Market stores in the United States.
Shares of Amazon were down $7.39, or 0.37% to $2,003.61 as of 11:46 a.m. ET Monday. The stock has gained more than 33% since the beginning of the year.
Amazon.com Inc Profile
Amazon is among the world’s highest-grossing online retailers, with $233 billion in net sales and $408 billion in estimated global gross merchandise volume (GMV) in 2018.
Online product and digital media content sales accounted for 53% of net revenue in 2018, followed by commissions, related fulfillment and shipping fees, and other third-party seller services (18%), Amazon Web Services’ cloud compute, storage, database, and other offerings (11%), Prime membership fees and other subscription-based services (6%), product sales at Whole Foods and other physical store retail formats (7%), and advertising services and cobranded credit cards (4%).
International segments constituted 32% of Amazon’s non-AWS sales in 2018, led by Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan. – Warrior Trading News
