On one of the busiest online shopping days of the year, Black Friday, thousands of Amazon employees decided it was also a good day to walk off the job. Warehouse workers in several distribution centers in Germany and Italy took the day off to demand higher wages and better treatment.
In addition to asking for a pay raise, the German union Ver.di says Amazon needs to vastly improve the “work culture” and stop pushing employees too hard. The Italian Amazon workers that participated in the Black Friday strike said they want “dignified salaries” more in line with their jobs. They gathered outside one distribution center located in Piacenza.
“Work is not a commodity,” said Annamaria Furlan, the secretary general of the union CISL, which represents Amazon employees in Italy, as cited by a TechCrunch report. “The dignity of workers must not be trampled on.”
