AMAZON employ Nazis as paramilitary enforcers
Patrick Reid | 15.02.2013 00:18 | Anti-racism | Public sector cuts | Workers' Movements
Not content with pursuing the kind of tax scams that are causing the whole-scale destruction of public services here in the UK, corporate tax cheats AMAZON have been filmed employing Nazi thugs to intimidate its foreign temp workers in Germany.
An ARD channel TV documentary showed AMAZON employing paramilitary guards from a security company named after Nazi leader Rudolph HESS, some wearing clothing from a company called Thor Steinar, whose products are (ironically) banned from sale on Amazon because of Thor Steinar's well-known Nazi connections & use of Nazi imagery!
An ARD channel TV documentary showed AMAZON employing paramilitary guards from a security company named after Nazi leader Rudolph HESS, some wearing clothing from a company called Thor Steinar, whose products are (ironically) banned from sale on Amazon because of Thor Steinar's well-known Nazi connections & use of Nazi imagery!
Amazon is at the centre of a deepening scandal in Germany as the online shopping giant faced claims that it employed security guards with neo-Nazi connections to intimidate its foreign workers. Germany’s ARD television channel made the allegations in a documentary about Amazon’s treatment of more than 5,000 temporary staff from across Europe to work at its German packing and distribution centres.
The film showed omnipresent guards from a company named HESS Security wearing black uniforms, boots and with military haircuts. They were employed to keep order at hostels and budget hotels where foreign workers stayed. “Many of the workers are afraid,” the programme-makers said. The documentary provided photographic evidence showing that guards regularly searched the bedrooms and kitchens of foreign staff. “They tell us they are the police here,” a Spanish woman complained. Workers were allegedly frisked to check they had not walked away with breakfast rolls. Another worker called Maria said she was thrown out of the cramped chalet she shared with five others because she had dried her wet clothes on a wall heater. She said she was confronted by a muscular, tattooed security man and told to leave. The guards then shone car headlights at her in her chalet while she packed in an apparent attempt to intimidate her.
Several guards were shown wearing Thor Steinar clothing – a Berlin-based designer brand synonymous with the far-right in Germany. The Bundesliga football association and the federal parliament have both banned the label because of its neo-Nazi associations. Ironically, Amazon stopped selling the clothing for the same reasons in 2009.
ARD suggested that the name “HESS Security” was an allusion to Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. It alleged that its director was a man, named only as Uwe L, who associated with football hooligans and convicted neo-Nazis who were known to police. The programme-makers, who booked in at one of the budget hotels where Amazon staff were housed, said they were arrested by HESS Security guards after being caught using cameras. They were ordered to hand over their film and, when they refused, were held for nearly an hour before police arrived and freed them. The film showed HESS guards scuffling with the camera crew and trying to cover their lenses.
ARD said Amazon’s temporary staff worked eight-hour shifts packing goods at the company’s logistics centres in Bad Hersfeld, Konstanz and Augsburg. Many walked up to 17 kilometres per shift and all those taken on could be fired at will. On arrival in Germany, most were told their pay had been cut to below the rate promised when they applied for jobs at Amazon. “They don’t see any way of complaining,” said Heiner Reimann, a spokesman for the United Services Union (Ver.di). “They are all too frightened of being sent home without a job.”
Silvina, a Spanish mother of three in her 50s, who lost her job as an art teacher, was featured in the film. She applied for three months’ work with Amazon to earn some badly needed cash. “It’s like being in a machine and we are just a small part in this machine,” she told the programme. HESS Security did not respond to the allegations made by ARD. Amazon employs 7,700 full-time staff at seven distrubution centres in Germany. The accusations led to the company’s Facebook site being inundated with angry complaints.
The company said: “Although the security firm was not contracted by Amazon we are, of course, currently examining the allegations concerning the behaviour of security guards and will take the appropriate measures immediately. We do not tolerate discrimination or intimidation.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amazon-used-neonazi-guards-to-keep-immigrant-workforce-under-control-in-germany-8495843.html
The film showed omnipresent guards from a company named HESS Security wearing black uniforms, boots and with military haircuts. They were employed to keep order at hostels and budget hotels where foreign workers stayed. “Many of the workers are afraid,” the programme-makers said. The documentary provided photographic evidence showing that guards regularly searched the bedrooms and kitchens of foreign staff. “They tell us they are the police here,” a Spanish woman complained. Workers were allegedly frisked to check they had not walked away with breakfast rolls. Another worker called Maria said she was thrown out of the cramped chalet she shared with five others because she had dried her wet clothes on a wall heater. She said she was confronted by a muscular, tattooed security man and told to leave. The guards then shone car headlights at her in her chalet while she packed in an apparent attempt to intimidate her.
Several guards were shown wearing Thor Steinar clothing – a Berlin-based designer brand synonymous with the far-right in Germany. The Bundesliga football association and the federal parliament have both banned the label because of its neo-Nazi associations. Ironically, Amazon stopped selling the clothing for the same reasons in 2009.
ARD suggested that the name “HESS Security” was an allusion to Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. It alleged that its director was a man, named only as Uwe L, who associated with football hooligans and convicted neo-Nazis who were known to police. The programme-makers, who booked in at one of the budget hotels where Amazon staff were housed, said they were arrested by HESS Security guards after being caught using cameras. They were ordered to hand over their film and, when they refused, were held for nearly an hour before police arrived and freed them. The film showed HESS guards scuffling with the camera crew and trying to cover their lenses.
ARD said Amazon’s temporary staff worked eight-hour shifts packing goods at the company’s logistics centres in Bad Hersfeld, Konstanz and Augsburg. Many walked up to 17 kilometres per shift and all those taken on could be fired at will. On arrival in Germany, most were told their pay had been cut to below the rate promised when they applied for jobs at Amazon. “They don’t see any way of complaining,” said Heiner Reimann, a spokesman for the United Services Union (Ver.di). “They are all too frightened of being sent home without a job.”
Silvina, a Spanish mother of three in her 50s, who lost her job as an art teacher, was featured in the film. She applied for three months’ work with Amazon to earn some badly needed cash. “It’s like being in a machine and we are just a small part in this machine,” she told the programme. HESS Security did not respond to the allegations made by ARD. Amazon employs 7,700 full-time staff at seven distrubution centres in Germany. The accusations led to the company’s Facebook site being inundated with angry complaints.
The company said: “Although the security firm was not contracted by Amazon we are, of course, currently examining the allegations concerning the behaviour of security guards and will take the appropriate measures immediately. We do not tolerate discrimination or intimidation.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amazon-used-neonazi-guards-to-keep-immigrant-workforce-under-control-in-germany-8495843.html
Patrick Reid
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The original video report
15.02.2013 00:48
And original website report -
Machine translation into English - "The main thing that temporary workers are cheap"
Workers in the Amazon Logistizentrum Bad Hersfeld. They live cooped up in their homes, are monitored around the clock and paid lousy - the contract workers live at the online retailer Amazon in Bad Hersfeld virtually no rights, as the two hr reporter Diana Loebl and Peter Onneken in her report.
In the top-selling weeks before Christmas employs the world's largest online retailer Amazon thousands of temporary workers at its German logistics centers such as the concern in the town of Bad Hersfeld.They come from Eastern European countries such as Spain and crisis. Their working and living conditions at this time is more than poor, as the hr reporter Diana Loebl and Peter Onneken in her documentary "Delivered!" uncovered.(reps at 24.3. clock in at 18:30 hr-TV)
According to their research, the people are suffering, especially among the employees of the private security service HESS security, they control every step.Controversial: For security beefy men work with close-cropped hair and in "Thor Steinar" jackets - a brand that is preferably supported on the extreme right and is no longer sold on Amazon for this reason. And indeed it seems to give compounds of HESS Security in the neo-Nazi scene. Amazon issued despite repeated requests over several months no filming permit and no other information. Employees of the dubious security service even tried to confiscate Löbls and Onnekens footage.
"Delivered" in your documentation You ask who is paying the bill at the end of the reasonable prices, Germany's largest online retailer Amazon. Who pays?
Diana Loebl: These are the employees in the logistics centers such as the concern in the town Bad Hersfeld, both employees as temporary workers. Peter Onneken: The few temporary workers earn just under ten euros gross per hour, when the agency workers the wage is even again in some cases significantly lower.
They learned that the Christmas season not even one in four in Bad Hersfeld Logistics Centre is permanently employed.Where are the thousands of temporary workers?
Diana Loebl: 2011 they were probably still mostly from Poland, 2012 then increased from Spain. There were typical victim of the recession here, teachers, academics. Onneken Peter: This is different from location to location. The motto is: The main thing that temporary workers are cheap. Loebl Diana: Last year was the first time made it a condition that the temporary workers hired at least begin to understand German or English.
Before Christmas, Amazon employs many temporary workers. The temps are in crowded buses drove to their shifts, housed in crowded resorts in eastern Hesse and is monitored by a security service continuously. Why do people on this?
Diana Loebl: All is not told in their recruitment in their home countries. And because their home situation is so bad, in spite of everything they earn relatively good money here, for to fund their families. But of all those with whom we spoke, we heard that they said the security went too far. Peter Onneken:It's a classic globalization story set but this time in the middle of Germany: In this case happens to be the packages for the German customers packed be. The question is whether the expected Amazon customers not that who bring their Christmas presents on the way to be treated properly.
Why come Amazon and instructed by the company through temporary employment agencies that?
Loebl Diana: Because no one complains. A union secretary told us that contract workers are in fact rights. They live only for a few weeks in Germany, the working conditions they are not really care. There is simply no one responsible for it, no union. Onneken Peter: The temporary workers also appear in our everyday lives on not, as in a pedestrian area. They live in holiday villages, which would be in the winter otherwise completely deserted. It's as if she were not there.
Then came across evidence that the security company that concern in the town village Kirchheim monitors temps compounds has in the neo-Nazi scene.
Peter Onneken: At some point we became aware of the striking brawny appearance of the men, some of them were wearing jackets of "Thor Steinar ", a popular brand in the scene. Then this name: HESS Security - as the name of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess. The CEO of the company is now on the internet with photos convicted far-right.
David McCallum
Fucking stupid Nazis
15.02.2013 01:02
Changes
"Anders Breivik" Store opened by Thor Steiner in Norway
15.02.2013 01:42
In an act of provocation that is creating outrage in Germany and Norway, the Thor Steinar clothing company, associated with the neo-Nazi scene, has opened a store in eastern Germany with a name almost identical to that of Norwegian right-wing extremist killer Anders Behring Breivik. City politicians have lambasted the "scandalous" development.
In an apparent deliberate act of provocation, the Thor Steinar clothing brand, popular among German neo-Nazis, has opened a store in the eastern German city of Chemnitz bearing the name of the far-right Norwegian mass murderer responsible for killing dozens of people, including scores of youth, last summer.
The company opened a store named "Brevik" in the city last Thursday, prompting outrage in Germany and Norway over the name. German daily Die Welt reports that the company has defended the name, noting that each of its stores is named after a town in Norway. Brevik is a town located south of Olso with around 2,700 residents. According to the paper, the company opened a store with the same name several years before Anders Behring Breivik went on a killing spree by bombing a government building in Oslo and posing as a police officer and massacring 77 people at a summer political camp for youth on the Utoya island.
The store's opening has already angered many in Chemnitz, where residents and officials are concerned about the damage the store opening will have on the city's reputation -- both in Germany and abroad.
"It is out of the question for a store to have a name like that," city spokeswoman Katja Uhlemann told Die Welt's website. "We have already contacted the landlord and will plan every step necessary to shut down this business as quickly as possible."
Contacted by several newspapers, the owner of the building said he had been deceived at the time the rental contract was signed and that he was unaware a Thor Steinar outlet would be opened at the site.
According to the newspaper, Hanka Kliese, a member of the state parliament with the center-left Social Democratic Party, has an office located just a few meters from the store. "This scandalous naming shows a new quality in the aggression, right-wing extremism and capacity of violence of Thor Steinar," she told Die Welt. "Now we know just who we are dealing with." Kliese accused the state government of Saxony, where the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) also holds seats in parliament, of doing too little to combat right-wing extrmism In recent months, Saxony has drawn attention because the state was long home to a neo-nazi terror cell that committed 9 murders of immigrants and one of a police officer. The group lived for a time in both Chemnitz and nearby Zwickau during their years in hiding.
On Monday, several thousand Chemnitz residents gathered to protest against right-wing extremism and neo-Nazis in the city. The city's mayor, Barbara Ludwig, told the local Freie Presse newspaper that 2,000 people had gathered in the inner city, to send a "message of a peaceful, cosmopolitan, diverse and tolerant Chemnitz in which there is no place for Nazis." The protest was part of a commemoration of the city's destruction 67 years ago during World War II.
According to the Freie Presse, Norway has long sought to distance itself from Germany's Thor Steinar brand, which has used the Norwegian flag and other Nordic symbols on its clothing in the past. "We consider it very regrettable that Thor Steinar uses Norwegian place names in order to associate Norway as such with Thor Steinar and the extreme right-wing scene," Anne-Kirsti Wendel Karlsen of the Norwegian Embassy in Berlin told the newspaper. "Acting at the request of a number of communities, we have asked that Norwegian town names not be used. But we unfortunately have no legal recourse to pursue it through the courts."
Over the weekend, major Norwegian newspapers including Verdens Gang and Aftenposten reported on the store's opening.
Anti-Nazi
Stoke EDL
15.02.2013 02:02
Fuck The EDL
Thor Steiner gear at Blood & Honour gig
16.02.2013 14:57
Lionel
Thor Steinar Fans "Casuals Disunited" Officially Surrender!
16.02.2013 23:14
Tell all your friends, dudes, and remember to remind all on sundry that Casuals United no longer exist.
LOL-FUCKIN'-LOL!
(A) NO MASTERS, NO GODS AND NO (SO-CALLED) CASUALS UNITED!
Antiflag