Organizing and Collective Bargaining in the Digitized “Tertiary Factories” of Amazon: A Comparison Between Germany and Italy.

The chapter questions how digitalization impacted on work organization and the institutions of industrial relations, taking into account work within the fulfillment centers of Amazon. At the organisation level, algorithmic management and electronic devices give rise to a sort of "digitalized tertiary factory" characterized by an unprecedented variant of "digital taylor-fordism", which brings back basic needs for work protection. On the other hand, the analysis of the ongoing conflict in Germany and, more recently, in Italy highlights on one side the structural obstacles that stand in the union action and, on the other, the institutional indifference of Amazon, not least because of the structural weakness of the national structures, still fordist and "analogical", and the inadequacy of European institutional level relating to transnational collective bargaining.