MADRID (Reuters) - Workers at Amazon’s biggest warehouse in Spain started a two-day strike on Thursday just ahead of a gift-giving feast day, as part of a long-running campaign for better pay and conditions.
The strike, called by the country’s two main unions, CCOO and UGT, may affect the delivery of products for Epiphany, the day on which three kings brought gifts to Jesus in Christian tradition, which most Spaniards mark by exchanging presents.
“We have been protesting for a year. This is the richest company in the world and they want to keep profiting by taking away workers’ rights,” said David Matarraz, an Amazon worker outside the warehouse close to Madrid.
Amazon workers in Germany and Poland have also walked off the job, demanding better conditions.
German and Spanish workers went on strike two months ago on Black Friday, the discount spending spree that kicks off the Christmas shopping season, but Amazon said this had no impact on customer orders.
Seventy percent of employees at the Spanish center joined Thursday’s strike, CCOO representative Douglas Harper said. An Amazon spokesman denied this, saying most employees at the center had been at work on Thursday.
Employees at the Madrid center earn a minimum 19,300 euros ($21,933) per year, the spokesman said. Spain’s legal monthly minimum wage is 1,050 euros.
Protesters at the site lit a bonfire and a man walked around wearing a mask showing the face of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Necroledo on January 4th, 2019 at 10:36 UTC »
Just dropping by to add some information, as a Spaniard, to help understand the context of this strike: the situation about wages and cost of living, here in Spain, has become quite bad in the last years.
Wages tend to be lower than in other European countries, including in jobs that typically have higher ones like engineers and medics; the latter are also usually greatly understaffed in the public healthcare system. This is combined with very common extra hours, sometimes unpaid: we're often surprised to hear other countries barking at the idea of extra hours, when for us they have been pretty much guaranteed to happen for many years. Many small businesses have also been disappearing when multinationals steeped in, during the economic crisis.
Cost of electricity, gas (the one at home, not for the car) and housing has become really high at the same time. Electricity companies are just a couple and are owned by the government, who pushes whatever crap they come up with (let's not get into the state of Spanish politics, it's just sad and facepalm-worthy), including at some point supporting solar panels on private buildings for environmental reasons only to ban them (and put taxes on those who bought these expensive panels) a few years later. Gas has a similar situation. Housing has become ridiculously expensive, even renting, to the point college students often have to accept unbelievably shitty shared houses for a ridiculously high rent because there are no more options.
As you can imagine, the two things combined do not paint a nice situation. Strikes here are also a right, as far as I know.
This also comes in the middle of a lot of social and political tension, so patience for injustice is running low. This is more eof a personal view on it, but we Spaniards have been about barking at problems but not actually doing anything to fix them for too long. I think that is coming to an end, or at least beginning to.
MaybeImDead on January 4th, 2019 at 07:52 UTC »
It's impressive reading all the comments defending the abuse of workers by one of the wealthiest companies in the world, Remember when workers fought for their rights and actually won enough to have a good standard of living, you know, the standard of living we enjoy today?, now a lot of people have been brainwashed to defend companies against those pesky workers who want time to take a piss in work hours.
Skeezy_Steve on January 4th, 2019 at 04:46 UTC »
Workers rights are going to be a hotly contested issue this century and we all need to do better as we are on the back foot.