Challenges and solidarity

The organising drive has encountered a series of problems. Following the slowdown and the strike ballot, Amazon increased the pressure on activist workers. While initially, workers were allowed to speak during the pre-shift meetings and general assemblies called ‘all hands,’ this was limited after workers had used them to voice complains and demands. Amazon also tried to prevent regular leafleting outside the warehouses. It assigned ip activists to the most boring and tedious positions, and frequently transfers them so they do not form closer relations to colleagues. Amazon also tries to get rid of union activists and senior workers in general, and to replace them with temporary agency workers without experience (and without the opportunity to take sick leave).

The high labour turnover at Amazon is because of not only temporary agency work but also the fact that often permanent workers quit the job because they are tired and fed up with the conditions. This represents a challenge for ip, too. Quitting can be seen as a sign of discontent and resistance, but also weakens the union as members leave and drop out of union activities. To keep its strength and numbers, the union constantly has to recruit new members, which absorbs a lot of resources. So far ip has not managed to include the many other logistics workers in the region in the organising effort, especially as many former Amazon workers who were part of ip have switched jobs and found other employment in the region—a good chance to get involved in workers’ struggles there as well.

The organising experiences at Amazon Poland also show the limits of ‘official’ or ‘formal’ union activity, meaning the limits imposed by labour laws and the ‘representative’ form of a union, for instance during collective bargaining processes and strike ballots. The Amazon section of ip has organised a number of less formal activities, often with the help of supporters, such as rallies, and it has got involved in activity organised autonomously, such as debates on social media where workers share experiences with others, and spread information to the press. And of course, workers have become active themselves outside the legal framework, as during the slowdowns and other acts of defiance at work.

No Solidarity from Solidarność

Solidarity has been organised to connect permanent workers and temporary agency workers at Amazon, and in some cases workers from other sectors organised in ip supported the Amazon section, for example theatre workers from Poznań who demanded that their theatre stop sponsorship relations with Amazon, referring to the latter’s work practices. Meanwhile, a particularly annoying conflict was provoked by the mainstream Polish union Solidarność, which has far more members in general in Poland but a weaker stance in Amazon warehouses. While ip has its strongest presence in the Poznań warehouse, Solidarność is mainly present in the warehouses close to Wrocław, but has not managed to organise as many workers as ip. Solidarność tries to sell itself to Amazon as a collaborative and ‘reasonable’ union, while publicly attacking ip for being too ‘radical’ and irresponsible. Besides its union activity, Solidarność focuses on culturally conservative and religious issues, and actively supports the current right-wing Polish government run by the party PiS.

Cross-border Amazon workers’ meetings

Workers’ struggles at Amazon need to be coordinated beyond one country if they are to be efficient. Amazon warehouses in Europe are part of one distribution network, and—as warehouses in different regions store the same items—orders can be shifted from one warehouse to another if problems arise, such as bad weather, traffic jams or worker protests.

Five such cross-border Amazon workers’ meetings have taken place so far in Poland, Germany, and France, and more are planned. The meetings are organised ‘beyond’ union memberships and hierarchies. In other words, all Amazon workers and supporters are welcome, as the goal is to build workers’ power and solidarity beyond the competition of union organisations. Only a few dozen workers have so far actively attended, but the cross-border meetings proved valuable for exchanging information on wages, bonuses, labour contracts, and labour court cases, and the information has been used in leaflets and statements, and found its way into workers’ discussions at the workplace and demands to local managements.

Conclusion

The grassroots organising and ‘formal’ union activity at Amazon had some success, in maintaining a group of worker activists, the documentation of experiences of struggle, the continued involvement of new workers, and so on. Amazon’s dual employment strategy, its attacks on worker activists, the high rate of labour turnover, the obstacles presented by Polish labour laws, and the activists’ exhaustion as a result of the shift system are among the problems the union faces. ‘Informal forms of struggle have been tested, and might offer an alternative way to increase workers’ power at the workplace in the future. Rather than mere organisation-building, the confrontation with the company hierarchy in the warehouses and the collective experience of creating change through formal and informal means remain the main focus.

The Amazon workers’ cross-border meetings are still at an embryonic stage. A core of worker activists are willing to take on the challenges in Poland, Germany, and France. They are driven by the fact that ‘cross-border’ organising helps workers involved to see the potential power of collective struggles as they learn that they are not isolated and others are willing to support them. They understand that it is vital to document and analyse workers’ experiences in different countries, and present them to new workers at Amazon and others in logistics companies elsewhere. However, the impact of the cross-border activity will remain limited unless more Amazon warehouse workers (and supporters) from more countries get involved. This article is also meant as a call to everyone working at Amazon or connected in some way to logistics workers’ struggles to get in contact and join in the organising.

Choke Points: Logistics Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain is edited by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Immanuel Ness and is available from Pluto Press.

This blog post is collectively authored by Amazon warehouse workers, in collaboration with activists from a grassroots union and the co-organisers of Amazon workers’ meetings.