Amazon workers in Germany have called a strike, fighting the online retailer for better pay. The national trade union Verdi will lead the strike.
Amazon employs around 9,000 people in Germany and has come under fire from trade union Verdi for refusing to implement a collective agreement on employment conditions, similar to other mail order and retail firms … The union is also pressing for higher basic pay and bigger supplements for night shifts.
While strikes are less common now in the publishing and bookselling world, publishing professionals have a history of collective action in the United States.
This GalleyCat editor wrote about a publishing house strike during the Great Depression. Here’s more about a now-forgotten publishing strike in 1934:
In 1934, Dashiell Hammett, Edward Newhouse and nine other authors joined brave employees on the picket line outside Macaulay Company publishing house—reportedly, the first publishing house strike in America … I wanted to share the list of demands that the strikers offered in 1934. It serves as a reminder of how far we’ve come in workers’ rights over the 20th Century and what we need to protect in the future.
(Photo via Library of Congress & link via Edward Champion)
