Dear fellow Amazon workers and supporters,
we kindly invite you to our next Amazon Workers’ Cross-Border Meeting that will take place in Poznan (West Poland) from Friday, March 15, until Sunday, March 17, 2019.
This is a grassroots meeting organized by workers themselves to exchange information, to support each other in our local struggles, and to find common strategies for our fight for the improvement of working conditions in our warehouses and beyond.
Behind the meeting is no formal organization, neither a particular union nor union tendency. We invite all Amazon workers, as individuals or unionized, to participate – including temp workers, outsourced workers, drivers, tech and white collar workers in and for Amazon warehouses – who want to fight exploitative relations we face at work every day.
We started these meetings in spring 2015 and have continued to meet twice a year since. We had workers and supporters from Germany, Poland, France, England and the US, and we hope to be able to include workers and supporters from more countries in the future.
The discussions were fruitful and useful for our local initiatives and we managed to coordinate common actions in different countries. Please, see the final statements of our meetings at the blog https://amworkers.wordpress.com.
During these meetings we recognized three main topics:
- wages and working conditions
- control, feedbacks, and other disciplinary measures
- employment relations, including short term contracts and temp work.
At the meeting in Poznan we want to focus on the third topic. Limited work contracts and temp work have been used by Amazon extensively in many warehouses in different countries. They are putting workers in unstable positions, treat them as economic factors that can be used and discarded at the company’s will. Amazon says that the flexible contracts are needed for seasonal work, but they are, actually, used during the whole year.
As the different kinds of contracts lead to splits in the work force, they have a big effect on our organizing at the workplace, too, as could be seen at strikes in Germany and Spain.
At the meeting in Poznan, we want to discuss the specific situation of temp workers and workers with limited contracts as well as ways to confront Amazon and to deal with these problems.
If there are other particular topics you want to discuss at the meeting, please, let us know and we will include them in the agenda.
Organizational issues
This is a meeting of Amazon workers and supporters who help to organize the struggles and take over direct daily support tasks.
The meeting will start on Friday, March 15, after 6 p. m., so, please, arrange to arrive before that. The meeting will end on Sunday, March 17, at 2 p. m.
A detailed agenda and information on the exact place where the meeting will be held in Poznan will be sent to you after you registered.
Please, register by sending an email with precise information to amaworkers@tutanota.com – as soon as possible but not later than March 1, 2019.
Please, tell us if you need any financial assistance for travel expenses and we try to find a solution. We will organize accommodation in local hostels (and, for that reason, need your registration as soon as possible).
The meeting will be in several languages and we will organize translation, but, please, let us know if you need translation for a specific language. And tell us if you have any other special needs.
Part of the agenda will be a public event, and media and others who are interested to ask questions and learn more about the struggle are invited to participate in that. Date, time, and place will be announced on https://amworkers.wordpress.com.
amazing workers 