Hi all, after listening to a CBC report on Amazon working conditions in Canada, which sounded rather dismal, I am wondering about working for Amazon in Germany. Germany has better worker standards than Canada by far (I’m from Canada but live in Germany now). Does anyone have any experience working for Amazon in Germany? Especially in the fulfillment centres? While I’m certain that it might not be a great job, is it borderline acceptable with sick policies and vacation days and the like?
CBC episode in question:
4 comments
There is a lot of bad press going on and at least anecdotally I never heard of anyone working there, who had a different choice. In my impression it is mostly people forced by the unemployment office, that otherwise would not get unemployment benefits anymore or people from poorer EU countries, that simply do not get another job. (Strictly anecdotal, maybe someone with more knowledge of the logistics field like /u/frontdackel could know more about it)
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https://www.sueddeutsche.de/karriere/streiks-erfurt-prekaere-arbeitsbedingungen-verdi-aktionstag-bei-amazon-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-210901-99-47112
My father works for amazon but as a mechanic. He is super happy but he admits that the low skilled workers are not treated as good as the employees with a degree. It is definitely not as bad as in the US or similar because the laws don’t allow it here. There are lots of seasonal employees in Q4, a high rotation and they also work at night and sometimes even the full weekend. It highly depends what your job is there. Like I said my father is a mechanic, he gets paid better since he works there and he likes the atmosphere and you get for every small thing a bonus. The only thing he doesn’t like is the night shift but that is not amazon specific, he will face that in almost all logistic centers.
Buddy worked for Amazon here. Said it was miserable. Said he logged easily 20 miles a shift.
I did a tour there a few years ago for a job application. No one looked happy. Even management had an air of “better smile and look happy or its my ass”. Weird energy from everyone.
I work for Amazon currently and have done so for 3 years+ though not in fulfillment or logistics. I work in a salaried internal support/analyst position in the customer service branch and can honestly say that I have no complaints. I have had a tonne of development, support and chance to grow with Amazon. I started in CS because I needed a short term job after moving from one city to another and within 3 years I have moved into entirely different roles and doubled my salary.
CS associates at my office start with 12 euros/h for entirely unskilled labor, are trained extensively (and paid in full during that period), have 28 vacation days a year and work zero overtime except 2-3 days a year and even then it’s very limited. Is the CS job the most exciting thing in the world? No. Is it fairly paid and are the associates treated well? Absolutely. There is a lot of fair criticism aimed at the company but more than half of what I hear and read about working conditions is cheap and inaccurate shots taken by people with zero clue what they are talking about.
Keep in mind that unskilled labor will never be lucrative. In my experience, small businesses mistreat their staff much worse than the big corps because they can get away with it unseen – all of the horror stories about shitty bosses and excess overtime and harassment I hear from within my social bubble are from people working for small/medium businesses that fly under the media radar. Casual racism, sexism, homophobia and other similar BS that people put up with just does not fly at Amazon. That said: it’s definitely not an environment for everyone.
All of the above: my personal take only, make of it what you will. All I have is anecdotal personal experience, and with 1.5 million employees WW, I’m sure plenty of people will have different stories and views to share.