Alessandria – Dozens leave every day, from the Amazon “station” on Via Piave in the Marengo Retail area, to quickly scatter through the streets of the city, to the most remote corners of the province. But for Uiltrasporti, they don’t do it in safe conditions, with inadequate means, crazy pace and exhausting hours.
I am in total there are around one hundred couriers who work in Alessandria for the Rimini company Twe srl, which took over from Elpe in 2022 in managing – on behalf of Amazon which entrusted it with the contract – the deliveries of parcels managed by the e-commerce giant throughout the Alessandria area. «It’s a shame that drivers are forced to do so in a scenario that suffers from a shortage of vehicles, in the face of an increase in the volume of work, and, above all, the use of unsuitable vehicles – is the complaint by Angelo Barrocu, head of the sector Logistics for the Alessandria secretariat of Uiltrasporti – A problem that we have been complaining about for some time but without success and which has worsened since the beginning of this year”.
The union, which represents approximately 90% of members among the Alexandrian workers of Twe srl, there is talk of vans (all rented) with flat tyres, cracked windshields and worn brakes, with an inadequate and deficient level of maintenance. Details that are not negligible for the approximately one hundred couriers who are forced to drive those vehicles for up to ten hours a day, according to what Uiltrasporti reports, and at a much more than sustained pace to meet delivery times, which also include 150 stops a day. The risk of accidents for them is around the corner (and damage to them).
«From what we understand – adds Barrocu – when the vehicles, due to various problems, are identified as unfit for circulation and blocked by Amazon, which is very scrupulous on the safety front, the company would not have too many problems putting them into circulation anyway , changing their identification code. The same mechanism is used with workers, who have part-time contracts of three days a week but who, having changed their identification, can work for seven or eight days in a row, even exceeding the daily hours.”
The provincial secretariat has already brought the employees together in the past and has written to the company several times to ask for a discussion on the topic and a change of pace. The last time, in April, the communication was copied to Assoespressi. Amazon itself would not have liked Twe’s behavior at all and would have called on the company to respect the rules, under penalty of exclusion.
«For the rest – continues Barrocu – all our reports so far have produced no effect, except fueling a climate of intolerance towards the union and our representatives in the company on the part of the contractor. So much so that we don’t hide a little concern for the workers, who are always the first to lose out.”
The “Alessandria case” (Twe also operates in Brandizzo, in the Turin area, but not for Amazon) is already under the spotlight of the regional and national secretariats of Uiltrasporti and it is not excluded that, in the absence of solutions, the union decides to go on strike or to move on to formal complaints to the ASL SPRESAL or to the Labor Inspectorate. For now, no comments have been received from Twe.
