European regulators and unions are circling Amazon

IN Germany, unions are pushing Amazon.com Inc to prevent warehouse workers from congregating before their shifts. In Italy, where a Covid-19 outbreak hit Amazon's main logistics depot, unions staged an 11-day strike that ended after the company granted employees an additional five-minute break to practise better personal hygiene. And in what amounts to the most significant pushback yet, a French appeals court on April 24 upheld an earlier ruling ordering Amazon to sell only essential products in the country to protect the safety of warehouse workers.

At its Seattle headquarters, some senior Amazon executives worry that the original French court order would set a precedent, said a source.

For years, Amazon has mostly prevented organised labour from penetrating its employee ranks, helping keep costs down even as the company offers faster service for its customers. So far Amazon has managed to keep its operations going in the US, despite protests at several of its warehouses. But in Europe, the company's handling of the outbreak has provided fresh ammunition for the continent's powerful unions and activist regulators, raising the stakes for it in its second-biggest market.

While the European Amazon retail business generates about 13 per cent of the company's US$280 billion in revenue the continent's importance to Amazon cannot be overstated. At home, Amazon faces much weaker unions than it does in Europe, where average participation hovers close to 23 per cent compared with about 10.3 per cent in the US. Now the continent's unions believe fallout from the pandemic has given them new leverage to extract more concessions from the company.

Labour unions don't want Amazon to just focus on virus-related sanitation, CFDT labour union representative Julien Vincent said. They want the company to address broader health concerns that its workers have, including the toll that the physical labour takes on their bodies. BLOOMBERG