Amazon founder and boss Jeff Bezos will be to Berlin on April 24, 2018, to receive the “Axel Springer Award.” He gets the award for his „visionary entrepreneurship in the internet economy“ and the “digitalization strategy” at the Washington Post which he owns.
Bezos’ “vision” is centering around the usage of digital technologies for the exploitation, surveillance and disciplining of Amazon employees. His strategy has been implemented in Amazon offices and warehouses around the globe.
While Amazon claims that the company would care about their employees’ health, reality looks different. Shift work, increased work rates, high work intensity, constant control, and continuous pressure on everyone who does not meet the company requirements make Amazon workers sick.
Amazon is also notorious for low wages and precarious work relations as it employs many workers through temporary work agencies and with short-term labor contracts.
In recent years, workers in many countries, including in Germany, Poland, Spain, and France, have organized, demanded improvements, and resisted in the form of strikes and other forms of struggle.
For the past three years, workers have connected workers “across borders” and “across union memberships” – an attempt to increase the pressure on Amazon by linking up rank and file workers.
On April 24, 2018, we will be in Berlin to welcome Bezos appropriately, together with the campaign “Make Amazon Pay” and other supporters.
Amazon puts pressure on workers through managers’ regular (negative) “feedback” on a worker’s performance, but this time workers will give an appropriate “feedback” on Bezos!
We ask all Amazon workers and supporters to join us on the demonstration and rally in Berlin.
- 4 p.m.: Meeting at Oranienplatz, Berlin-Kreuzberg
- 4:30 p.m, Demonstration from Oranienplatz to the Axel-Springer-Haus on Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse
- 6 to 7:30 p.m., Rally in front of the Axel-Springer-Haus
If you cannot go to Berlin, please, talk to your colleagues, distribute this call, collect workers‘ feedback on Bezos in your own warehouse and send it to us before April 24 or simply fill out the online feedback form here.
amazing workers 