Brussels: A delegation of the European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee begins an Amazon warehouse visit on 26 October 2026, and the stakes reach well beyond one company. The mission, which runs until 27 October, feeds directly into the Quality Jobs Act, the planned EU proposal that is expected to address algorithmic management and worker health.
The delegation is led by committee chair Li Andersson of The Left. It includes Liesbet Sommen of the EPP, Estelle Ceulemans and Gaby Bischoff of the S&D, Kim van Sparrentak of the Greens, Leila Chaibi of The Left and Branislav Ondruš of the Non-Attached group. The Amazon warehouse visit covers three sites: an older and less automated warehouse in Dortmund, a newer robotic site in Mönchengladbach, and Amazon’s largest returns warehouse in Katowice, Poland.
Workers, works council members and union representatives will brief MEPs during the Amazon warehouse visit. The German union ver.di and Polish unions including Solidarność are expected to take part. Their message to the MEPs is likely to centre on surveillance, pace of work and the lack of a collective agreement in Germany, where Amazon continues to refuse to negotiate with ver.di.
The Amazon warehouse visit follows years of friction between the company and the Parliament. Amazon cancelled a planned fact-finding mission in December 2023 at short notice and has declined to appear at Employment Committee hearings. In February 2024 Parliament withdrew the access badges of Amazon lobbyists after a union campaign, only the second time it had barred a company’s lobbyists. Chaibi has said that Amazon accepted the current visit mainly to regain its accreditations, while van Sparrentak argues that company executives continue to deny reports of robotisation and monitoring.
The company has a lot to lose in Brussels. Sommen points out that Amazon employs more than 150,000 people across the EU, and Corporate Europe Observatory estimates that it spends almost 10 million euros a year on direct lobbying. A global survey from January 2023 found that 51 percent of Amazon workers said monitoring harmed their physical health and 57 percent said it affected their mental health, figures that unions are likely to repeat to the delegation.
The timing matters for legislation. Once the Commission presents the Quality Jobs Act, Parliament will have to decide how far to restrict automated systems that assign tasks, track productivity and discipline staff. First-hand evidence from a manual site and a robotic site will let MEPs compare how the same management software plays out in different working environments.
Trade unions are already looking beyond the committee room. A “Make Amazon Pay” day of action is planned for Black Friday, 27 November, with strikes and protests announced in more than 20 countries. Whatever the delegation hears this week, the Amazon warehouse visit gives the Employment Committee a rare chance to test its draft ideas against the shop floor before the Quality Jobs Act reaches the negotiating table.
