Today, Italian transport unions FILT-CGIL, FIT-CISL and UILTRASPORTI signed a historic industrial relations protocol with Amazon, establishing that the company must recognise them as social partners.
With this agreement, Amazon also commits to complying with the rules stipulated in the National Collective Labour Agreement for Logistics, Freight Transport and Shipping where their logistics employees are concerned. Unions will now be able to constructively negotiate with the logistics behemoth on health and safety issues, workload, working time, bonuses and more.
Unions reached this milestone through a long and difficult struggle that reached its peak when for the first time in history, Amazon’s entire logistics chain went on strike in Italy for 24 hours. Subsequently, the Italian Minister of Labour, Andrea Orlando, intervened, and negotiations eventually resumed and produced today’s result.
Now, Italian unions look forward to the next milestone: an agreement that covers Amazon’s subcontracted workers.
ETF General Secretary Livia Spera commented:
“We applaud this victory of our Italian unions – today’s agreement should serve as an example to the rest of the world!
Unions will not sit quietly while companies like Amazon take advantage of the workforce and spread precarious work.
All workers in the e-commerce sector must benefit from collective bargaining. It is the only way we can protect workers, stop destructive practices such as bogus self-employment, and regulate subcontracting.
Mark my words, this is a historic agreement, but it is the first of many”.
Similar battles between unions and e-commerce giants are ongoing throughout Europe in Spain, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, and Germany. The ETF is determined to end the anti-worker business models stemming from e-commerce and is organising its affiliates to tackle this horizontally and across borders.
This agreement between Amazon and Italy will be presented and celebrated at our first meeting on October 26.
