Amazon will close a center in Constantí (Tarragona) where some 150 people currently work, according to what TV3 has advanced and the ACN has been able to confirm. The logistics center is not directly managed by the American multinational, but by a subcontracted company, Kuehne Nagel. The operation will not affect, however, the other Amazon logistics warehouse in the municipality, which opened in 2021. Union sources have confirmed that they have received notification of the closure of the subcontracted center and that they are waiting to set up the negotiating table with the company to clarify the future of its 150 workers.
Kuehne Nagel began its activity seven years ago in the Constantí industrial estate and was one of the first Amazon logistics centers in Catalonia. The secretary of the works council, José Orellana, explained that they were officially notified last week that the American multinational was dispensing with their services. Amazon is the only customer of Kuehne Nagel, to whom it provides logistics services -order reception, preparation and shipping- in two warehouses that total about 40,000 square meters.
Given Amazon’s decision, Kuehne Nagel will lay off all its workers, some 140 due to cessation of activity. The layoffs will also affect about twenty employees who are subcontracted at the CTC company, Orellana has specified. The works council will begin to negotiate next Tuesday the conditions of the dismissals. “We hope that the company is open to negotiating and making good agreements, we know that it is very difficult to relocate staff because the two Barcelona centers are lowering production,” said the representative of the staff.
Orellana has stated that they are going to request compensation of 39 days per year worked and the possibility that the workers be relocated to other centers that the company has in Spain, such as those in Barcelona, ??Zaragoza, Madrid or Seville. In turn, he has charged against Amazon: “It is destroying direct and indirect jobs, it destroys more than it really creates; they have made us work Saturdays and Sundays, holidays so that the client stays and then has decided to leave, the conditions Amazon jobs are very precarious,” he denounced.
Asked about the statements made by the mayor Óscar Sánchez to other media, in which he says he has held informal conversations with other clients, Orellana has assured that no one has contacted them and that so far they have not received any offer to replace the multinational and avoid closure. “It is an election year, it is very good to say that there is an offer on the table,” he has settled.