The trade Union ver.di has won a legal dispute against Amazon: companies must accept that under certain conditions, trade unions on strike on the premises, decided by the Federal labour court in Erfurt with a principle of judgment. The online retailer Amazon failed against the attempt to prevent strikes in his company Parking lot. Ver.di evaluates the decision as a success. “Today, it was nothing Less than the scope of the right to strike,” said ver.di-employee Jens M. Schubert.
members of the services Union have been on strike for years in the Amazon Parking lot at the site in Pforzheim, distribute leaflets and invite the workforce, join the strike. The strikers are demanding that Amazon employees are paid according to the fare conditions of the item and the shipping trade. Amazon refuses, and is based on the remuneration in the logistics industry.
The Erfurt labour court judges have weighed in the process between the property rights of the employer and the right to strike and in favour of the trade unionists decided.
However, this was “not a licence for any trade Union action,” said the President of the Federal labour court, Ingrid Schmidt, in the opinion of the court. In this specific case, the employer had to accept a short-term, situational use of low areas of the company car Park. Also, the local conditions played a role. The Parking in Pforzheim is directly located in front of the main entrance, most of the employees come to work by car and would drive to the picket past, if the unionists would have to Dodge on a public walkway in front of the premises. As a court said a spokesman, I’m also in the future on the individual case. “At the end of the Union will not need to look that they are exaggerating it,” said the spokesman.
However, experts of the decision to attach a fundamental importance. The labor lawyer Olaf Deinert said, it is also the question of whether an employer can force the right to strike back and undermine. The Bonn-based labor lawyer Gregor Thüsing said that “the labor dispute law, is not regulated by laws, but by court decisions is concretised”. A lot of companies have Parking spaces in front of the factories or Farms. By the BAG-judgment is not now clear that this is necessarily enough to prevent strikes.
Amazon stated that they respect the right to each Individual, member of a trade Union and participate in lawful strikes. Whether Amazon will pull the case to the Federal constitutional court, left open the group first.
