German Amazon workers: ‘We Don’t Need Your Sympathy’

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/229833/we-dont-need-your-sympathy/

The workforce at Amazon.de is slowly forming resistance against the Ver.di labor union strikes.

‘We Don’t Need Your Sympathy’
die Welt, Germany
By Michael Gassmann and Marcel Leubecher
Translated By Erica Wilfong Boxheimer
7 January 2014
Edited by Gillian Palmer

The conflict between Amazon, the American online retailer, and the German labor union Ver.di has been held up for months — and is increasingly bursting outside the frame of a normal labor conflict. Experts observe that two worlds are colliding: the American concept of free enterprise goes against German perceptions of the fair union wage. “The American approach follows the principle: This is my company, so I make the decisions,” says Alexandra Henkel, a labor law expert from Berlin, “As a rule, German companies would not dare to do such a thing.”

In the U.S., the idea of individual assertiveness and competition is much stronger in the relationship between employers and workers than in Germany, explains Americanist Wilifred Raussert, from the University of Bielefeld. Ver.di chairman Frank Bsirske brings the approach of his organization in a video of the union to Amazon dispute with the point: “The union is there to neutralize competition among workers, or at least limit it; which is how the union contributes, to sell labor at better conditions than would be possible for individuals.”

A cultural divide also splits the workforce. More than 1,000 workers in Amazon distribution centers in Leipzig and Bad Hersfeld have addressed an appeal against the union’s conflict course. Workers criticized the union’s actions: “We enjoy working for Amazon, we ourselves are satisfied customers, we have secure employment, and we don’t wish to stand idly by while our reputation, thus our existence, is pilloried in the public sphere.”

The appeal states that the negatively drawn public image “follows us in private life.” They don’t want to have to justify their employer and working conditions; the image does not correspond to reality. Two Amazon employees, who have asked to remain anonymous, noted that friends and acquaintances feel downright sorry for them about their employment at Amazon.