Very predictably, next April 22 will be the key date for the Amazon center in Martorelles to cease its activity and move to Zaragoza. Given the process of closing the plant that the company is carrying out, the works council of the logistics center has decided to ask the workers to go on strike starting next January 31 to get the best possible conditions from management.
The unions will take this proposal to the workers’ assembly that they have convened for next Sunday in the Martorelles municipal pavilion, in which the status of the negotiations with the company will be explained, as reported by union sources this Friday.
The management and the Amazon committee in Martorelles held yesterday, Thursday, the first meeting of the consultation period to address the closure of the logistics center, where some 800 people work, to whom the company offers a transfer.
In the meeting, which lasted for more than seven hours, the management of the electronic commerce giant explained the reasons for the closure and its willingness to offer workers transfers to the new centers in Zaragoza and Figueres (Girona).
The committee will give details in the assembly on Sunday of the economic proposal for the transfers, as well as the economic compensation that employees who do not agree to change their workplace will receive.
At the moment, the company plans to compensate the second group with compensation of 20 days per year worked with a maximum of twelve months, thus adjusting to what the law establishes for these cases.
The committee considers this compensation insufficient and does not agree with the proposal on the transfers, so it will submit to a vote in the assembly to go on strike starting on January 31, and until the end of the negotiation, to put pressure on the company and get a better deal.
Most of the workers at Martorelles live in El Vallès and many have already been reluctant to move to Zaragoza, so the committee believes that those who will accept the company’s offer will be “the minimum”.
The same sources have pointed out that the workforce is quite young, many are students who combine work with classes and there are several cases of people who have just signed a mortgage or who have given a deposit.
The Martorelles center, located in the Cant Toca business park and which was the fourth that Amazon opened in Catalonia, is scheduled to cease its activity on April 22.
Amazon has affirmed that its closure and the transfer of the activity to Zaragoza is marked by its desire to adjust the operations network to its needs and to advance in “improving the experience of our employees and customers”. Currently, Amazon has more than 7,000 workers in Catalonia, 3,000 of them at its center in El Prat, the largest in Spain.
