MADRID Reuters workers at an Amazon logistics centre on the outskirts of Barcelona protested on Thursday at the end of an indefinite strike sparked by the company's plans to shut down the warehouse and relocate employees to other provinces.
They had staged pickets at the entrances to the warehouse, but union leaders said they were allowing truck drivers to enter and leave the centre where 800 people work. They accused Amazon of acting in bad faith by calling riot police to clear the area on the first day.
Amazon didn't want to comment on the ongoing dispute.
On January 11, the delivery giant announced that it would close the warehouse in the Martorelles suburb and move its activity to the city of Zaragoza, some 300 km 186 miles west of Barcelona.
While Amazon said all employees would be transferred to other logistics centres in Spain without any job losses, trade unions described the move as disguised layoffs and said collective bargaining deals in other provinces would result in worse pay conditions for workers.
It has more than one million people in the world, according to Elisenda Mas, a spokesman for Spain's largest union CCOO, told Reuters. She said that Amazon's latest offer for employees willing to move to Zaragoza or Figueres in the neighbouring province of Girona was a one-off relocation bonus of 3,000 euros $3,280 plus an unspecified amount spread out in 12 monthly instalments.
She said that moving away from Barcelona, where her husband works and her child attends school, was not a viable option because of the separate collective bargaining agreement in those provinces.
Striking workers are asking to be moved to other Amazon warehouses within the province of Barcelona.
Last month Amazon announced more than 18,000 job cuts around the world, mainly impacting its e-commerce and human resources divisions, as well as similar moves by tech companies such as Meta or Alphabet.