Amazon deliveries, a union is born even in Tokyo and Nagasaki
Workers dispute deadlines and impossible routes set by the algorithm. The pandemic has given a further significant boost to e-commerce in Japan: last year the three biggest shipping companies delivered a record 4.68 billion parcels.
Tokyo (AsiaNews) - It is no longer just Europe and North America. Now in Japan too, Amazon, the US e-commerce giant, has to reckon with a workers' movement that is starting to organise to make its demands heard and assert its rights. This is particularly significant in a country with a scant history of labour rights activism compared to the rest of the developed world.
The latest chapter in this story was written in Nagasaki, where on Monday 15 workers who deliver parcels for Amazon announced the foundation of their own union. This decision was born of the delivery workers demand for a regular contract that establishes precise working hours, increases wages and provides for fuel expenses.
At the moment, all 15 workers are considered as 'self-employed', with contracts that bind them to the shipping companies that Amazon relies on. Under Japanese law they have no employment protection in terms of working hours and overtime pay. What made working conditions even worse was the introduction of artificial intelligence for calculating deliveries. The criticism levelled at the algorithm is that it sets impossible deadlines and routes.
"AThe AI often doesn’t account for real-world conditions like rivers or train tracks or roads that are too narrow for vehicles. The results are unreasonable demands and long hours," says Sekiguchi Tatsuya, of the Tokyo Union joined by Nagasaki workers.
Last June, the first branch of the union was founded by 10 deliverymen who made Amazon deliveries in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo. At the origin of this movement lies a simple consideration: since the e-commerce giant sends delivery instructions directly to the deliverymen and controls their working hours, the conditions to be contracted as employees would be fulfilled. "It is Amazon and the subcontractor who tell us what to do," the workers repeat.
Since the 10 from Yokosuka have unionised, their situation has improved a lot. Their shipping company has sat down at the negotiating table and the 13-plus hour working day is a thing of the past. Amazon, however, still refuses to negotiate: 'the delivery men are doing their work according to the contracts with our subcontractors and are not our employees', says the US multinational.
Over the past year, Amazon has considerably expanded its presence in Japan and plans to expand super-fast deliveries to the whole country by 2023. The pandemic has given a significant boost to the e-commerce sector in Japan, which has grown by 20 per cent since 2019, and last year the three largest shipping companies delivered a record 4.68 billion parcels. To win this fierce competition. Amazon plans to expand its intermediate delivery stations by 60% by the end of 2022.
But if the price of this fierce competition is the sacrifice of workers' rights, many delivery workers are not happy about this and promise to organise. In fact, many other self-employed groups such as those in Yokosuka and Nagasaki are organising to join the union. And the demand is always the same: if Amazon gives the orders, then you are working for Amazon.
.png)
24/10/2019 17:56
09/07/2007
21/04/2005
