Labour union urges European authorities to widen Amazon antitrust probe after Reuters story

NEW DELHI, Oct 22 (Reuters) – A world commerce union for the companies sector on Friday urged European authorities to widen their antitrust investigation of Amazon.com Inc to evaluate if the corporate engaged in creating knockoff items and rigging search outcomes on its platform.

The demand by the UNI International Union was triggered by a final week primarily based on inner Amazon paperwork that confirmed the e-commerce firm ran a scientific marketing campaign of copying merchandise and manipulating search outcomes to spice up its personal personal manufacturers reminiscent of AmazonBasics in India, a key progress markets.

In a letter dated Oct. 22 to the European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen, and likewise marked to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, the union physique’s European arm mentioned authorities there should examine if Amazon engaged in “equally damaging behaviour throughout the European Union.”

“As additional revelations of the size of Amazon’s operations to undermine that degree taking part in area floor, additional motion is required to make sure it’s held accountable at each flip,” the letter, seen by Reuters, mentioned. It cited the Reuters story.

Spokespersons for Amazon and the European Fee didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

The union physique has been a vocal critic of Huge Tech’s enterprise practices world wide. UNI Europa says it represents about 7 million staff and counts a number of corporations’ labour unions amongst its members, together with these representing warehouse staff of Amazon in Spain, Germany, France and Italy.

The European authorities are already investigating Amazon’s place as each a market for retailers and a rival vendor.

Final 12 months, the Fee d the U.S. firm of utilizing its measurement, energy and knowledge to realize an unfair benefit over smaller retailers that promote on its on-line platform. On the time, Amazon mentioned the corporate represents lower than 1% of the worldwide retail market and there are bigger retailers in each nation it operates in.

The Amazon paperwork reviewed by Reuters confirmed how the corporate’s private-brands workforce in India secretly exploited inner knowledge from its India unit to repeat merchandise bought by different corporations, then provided them on its platform. The corporate additionally promoted gross sales of its personal manufacturers by rigging search outcomes on its India platform, the paperwork confirmed.

In response to the report, Amazon mentioned it believes “these claims are factually incorrect and unsubstantiated.” The corporate didn’t elaborate. The corporate mentioned the way in which it shows search outcomes would not favour private-brand merchandise.

After the Reuters story was revealed final week, 5 members of the U.S. Home Judiciary committee Andy Jassy, accusing the corporate’s high executives of both deceptive Congress or probably mendacity to it about Amazon’s enterprise practices.

U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a distinguished critic of Amazon, after the report, whereas in India, a gaggle representing thousands and thousands of brick-and-mortar retailers has requested the federal government to take motion towards Amazon.

Reporting by Aditya Kalra in New Delhi; Enhancing by Susan Fenton

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