burnish the Image, Amazon is currently in an unusual PR-measure: employees to engage on Twitter in the critical discussions and praise your employer in the highest tones.
At first glance, Anne, Andrea, Rico and Andreas like Social Bots. “Amazon FC Ambassador,” the four on Twitter. All Accounts were registered in October 2018 and have been specified as the location of brieselang, Germany.
FC stands for “Fulfillment Center”, to German logistics centre. Anne, Andrea, Rico and Andreas follow anyone and barely have Followers of your own. Your own posts don’t write the account. But they react extremely kindly to Tweets that criticize Amazon.
Tweet for the employer
for example, this Tweet from a User: “Amazon still refuses persistently to sign a collective contract for its 13,000 workers in the German logistics centres, complete […].” Andreas, one of the Amazon FC Ambassador, responds promptly: “hi Peter, I’m sorry, but I disagree. We are earning the minimum wage overnight.” Monthly bonuses of up to 12% added. And: “for my part, I don’t need any thickening.”
Or in this case: in mid-November, a User asks if he should order Christmas gifts on Amazon, or whether the employees would not have enough to do already. On Amazon FC Ambassador Anne replied: “I feel the holiday season as the most exciting time of the year. It is simply exciting, if you get the orders all the time from the FC. I like the most is to pick gifts. I feel like a helper from Santa Claus.”
Before Christmas, the employees went on strike at several of the Amazon logistics centres for better conditions.
For years, criticism of Amazon
Not all shipping employees are as satisfied as Ambassador Anne. For years, Amazon is due to the working conditions in the criticism. In the run-up to Christmas, employees in several German Amazon have placed logistics centres off the job until mid-January, the Union has ver.di in the Bavarian logistics center in Graben near Augsburg again for a collective agreement and a strike. This is to ensure a uniform pay for the employees.
Sylwia Lech was until Recently a member of the works Council in the trench and is responsible for, in the meantime, as ver.di-trade Union Secretary of the trade area for the district of Augsburg. She sees the Twitter-Ambassador-project critical: “Amazon is doing to its Image to the outside Supplement. This is, in my opinion, very bad,” said the trade unionist.
An evaluation of the BR shows that most of the Tweets relate to topics for which Amazon is always the target of criticism – most of the deal with the working conditions at the retailer.