Union Verdi is preparing more strikes to step up pressure on Amazon in Germany, its biggest market outside the United States, in a dispute over pay and conditions, German media reported.<\/p>\n
Workers at Amazon centers in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig will walk out for at least one day on Monday, Heiner Reimann of Verdi told daily Stuttgarter Nachrichten.<\/p>\n
The union has organized several short strikes this year in a bid to force the world’s biggest Internet retailer to accept a collective agreement on employment conditions similar to deals for the mail order and retail sector, which are more generous than for the logistics sector.<\/p>\n
Amazon regards staff in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig as logistics workers and says they receive above-average pay by the standards of that industry.<\/p>\n
Verdi board member Stefanie Nutzenberger told weekly Welt am Sonntag that the union could extend industrial action beyond those two centers during the busy Christmas holiday season.<\/p>\n
“And we will concentrate on days that will be especially disruptive to business,” she was quoted as saying in an article published on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Amazon employs around 9,000 people in Germany. Sales there grew almost 21 percent in 2012 to $8.7 billion, representing a third of its overseas total.<\/p>\n
“So far the strike action by Verdi has had no impact on shipments to our customers,” Amazon spokesman Stefan Rupp said in an e-mailed statement.<\/p>\n
He affirmed the company’s stance that it sees no benefit for its workers in the kind of collective agreement Verdi demands.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Maria Sheahan; editing by Andrew Roche and William Hardy)<\/p>\n
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