Amazon ‘recruits neo-Nazis’ to monitor foreign seasonal workers

Published on 18 February 2013 at 15:52

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"Amazon angers its clients," runs a headline in German weekly Welt am Sonntag reporting on the barrage of attacks against the US online bookseller following a television broadcast revealing the inhumane conditions under which the firm's foreign workers on short-term contracts work. ARD television channel revealed that in the Hessen region, casual employees, including many from Spain or Portugal, were housed in over-populated holiday homes, far from their place of work and were paid less than advertised.

But what really fanned the flames of controversy is that –

Amazon recruits security guards close to the neo-Nazi movement to intimidate, harass and spy on the foreign workers.

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Slate.fr as well as The Verge and EUobserver have also recently reported on this subject.

Last weekend, the German Minister of Labour , Ursula von der Leyen, called for more details on working conditions at Amazon and threatened that employment agencies supplying casual labour to the firm could find their licences "at risk," if the allegations are true.

According to German daily Südddeutsche Zeitung, Amazon cancelled a contract on February 18 with security firm Hensel European Security Services (Hess), which employed the guards shown in the television report.

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